**SNAP Conference 2013** Headline Speaker Is Radical Pro-Abort Eleanor Smeal, Proving Once Again Group Is Not Really About Sex Abuse

Lest there be any remaining doubt that the advocacy group SNAP is more about advancing a radical left-wing social agenda than providing actual helpful support for clergy abuse victims, this weekend's annual conference for the group in Washington D.C. is headlining a speech by Eleanor Smeal, the rabid president of the abortion activist group Feminist Majority.

Smeal's contempt for the Catholic Church cannot be overstated, as she has made it clear that the Catholic Church is her number one obstacle in advancing unfettered abortion-on-demand.

A few years ago, she told a pro-abortion gathering, "Opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and of the hierarchy is a major reason this issue (abortion) stays controversial. We've got to keep more pressure on this hierarchy [because] they're vulnerable now [due to the clergy sex abuse scandals]."

Smeal's appearance comes on the heels of last year's headline speaker, Rev. Barry Lynn, the ringleader of the loopy Americans United for Separation of Church and State, whose speech consisted almost entirely of him railing against the Catholic Church for its opposition to the Obama administration's healthcare mandate, thus providing more proof that SNAP really has another agenda at play.

Wheeling out tired Church bashers

There he goes again:alleged Catholic priest Tom Doyle

This year's conference will also feature Fr. Thomas Doyle, who has a long documented history of animus against the Church.

Doyle actually admitted at last year's conference that he has "nothing to do with the Catholic Church," he has "nothing to do with the clerical life," he is "not associated with the Church in any way," he operates on his own, and his beliefs are "about as far away from the Vatican as you can get."

In other words, Doyle is a dissident priest who has essentially conceded that he is really not even Catholic.

The conference will also feature the angry psychiatrist Marianne Benkert.

This will not be Benkert's first appearance at a SNAP gathering, as the Catholic League reported that her talk at the group's 2011 meeting was "the most inflammatory address of them all."

According to the Catholic League, Benkert wildly claimed of the Catholic Church: "[It] refuses to acknowledge sin; it engages in scapegoating; it sacrifices others; it is a master of disguise and pretense; it fosters intellectual deviousness; it lies; it forces the faithful to submit their will to the Church; it is controlling; and it causes 'religious duress'."

In all, the League characterized Benkert's anger and hatred as "off-the-charts."

Indeed, in 2008, Benkert co-authored a rambling and bizarre paper with Thomas Doyle called, "Religious Duress and Its Impact on Victims of Clergy Sexual Abuse."

Politics and malice, not support

In the end, the issue of clergy sex abuse has become nothing but window dressing for a larger broadside against the Catholic Church. The appearances by Smeal, Doyle, and Benkert play very well into SNAP's real motive: to promote a radical, "progressive" social agenda in direct opposition to that of the Catholic Church.

The ongoing, relentless broadsides against the Catholic Church at SNAP's annual conferences, which have been repeatedly documented, certainly make it hard for SNAP to argue that it has no vitriol against the Catholic Church and that its mission is merely to provide support for victims.

Interesting, as it has become crystal clear that it is NOT people who care about protecting children who want to "keep the ball rolling," it is people who want to bring down the Catholic Church. Helping victims and protecting children was never the issue for them. How much money has SNAP given toward helping victims heal? How very nice for SNAP that the media has the same anti-Catholic agenda.

What a pathetic line-up of sad malcontents. Sounds like SNAP has moved into the anger-management field. They've become so desperate they don't even bother to hide their true motives anymore. By the way, how much do they pay people to go to these pointless meetings?

You can't pretend to anyone; that if the Pope changes his mind about Gays or abortion or married priests or women priests that you wouldn't fall all over yourselves to obey him. Admit you would. Tell the truth and shame the devil.

With in the next 10 years something will have to give you are losing the attrition game. Priest wise. Something's got to give.

Faithful Catholics will never fear "losing" anything on earth, and will never cave in to the liberal or dogmatically and doctrinally flawed politicizations of true Catholicism.

Before the lefties drool all over themselves, they'd best review the world numbers (we do exist outside of the US, remember?) regarding priest vocations and student enrollment in seminaries, they are UP, not down. As mentioned in a previous post, our next generation of priests will originate from Asia and Africa – good luck with your bigotry and biases, there, boys. The socio-religious culture defining these continents make US conservative Catholics look like liberals. This is going to be fun.

No gay marriage, no married priests, no abortion, no female priests. If that's what you need to trip your religious trigger, be a Protestant (or anything else your little rainbow hearts desire). Leave Catholicism alone.

You simply can not change the Truth.

Re: Smeal: How desperate SNAP must be for $$ to come out of the lefty closet. Let's get that light of truth shining in all the dark corners and crevices of the dastardly lie that is the extent of the Church abuse matter.

Pope Francis, in a stunningly candid assessment of the state of the Catholic Church, said on Saturday it should look in the mirror and ask why so many people are leaving the faith of their fathers.

On the penultimate day of his trip to Brazil, Francis delivered a long address to the country's bishops in which he suggested elements of what could become a blueprint for stopping what he called an "exodus."

"I would like all of us to ask ourselves today: are we still a Church capable of warming hearts?" he said in a speech remarkable for its frankness about the hemorrhaging of the Church in many countries.

The Church has been losing members throughout the world to secularism and to other religions, including in Latin America, where evangelical groups have won over many converts.

You spoke to soon Delphin, your Pope, your leader even questions the future of your church.

And you claim us boys "are biased and bigots".

Also, where is this proof that you quote" student enrollment in seminaries, they are UP, not down". As mentioned in your comment.

I may not be able to use those fancy words, but I do read and I do listen and one thing that I listened to was a person tell me once" if you have those statements of others you don't have to be Hemingway".

I don't see what any of these speakers has to do with the pedophile priest crisis and the hundred thousand of us victims who are out here wondering WTF Snap is doing. What more can Tom Doyle say? I mean he speaks at every conference. But this lineup is really weird, I have to agree with you on this one, David. Don't understand this selection of speakers at all, unless it's to further bifurcate what is left of any survivor movement. . .

Ms Smeal, not knowing that Snap really is the church itself, probably was paid a speakers' fee or did it pro bono, as a tax right off. Or spoke because she just likes the victims cause maybe.

But why now? You know as well as I do Ms. Smeals a lefty and choosing Mz Smeal' to speak about Catholics,( JP2 Catholics in particular) is like having Hillary Clinton speak at the Cato Institute. It polarizes and unifies unilaterly one entire half in a rather large fight. the Catholics who support ending womens rights of choice. How to make SNAP even more outre to the rank and file catholics .the one's left in the church, Those who buy the political line set by JP2 .

SNAP Is no further "left" than is Doyle. Even if he resigned his priesthood I wouldn't believe him for an instant. He's the man behind the plan "The Project" as he named it.

The left in America is nothing if not overly democratic . Yet somehow SNAP and Doyle skipped democracy for victims in SNAP.

We victims when we were with SNAP could decide whether. we agreed to be at a demo,or not. But no other democratic events occured that weren't staged for effect fiegning being "above board" rather than as a consequence of some natural democratic urge.

The boy scouts, PTA, Fathers club, Mother's club all democratic to the core all represented Democracy itself to me as a kid. And then there was SNAP? . I have been on the left a very long time, A "left" without people, now that would be a miracle.. Ever see the left in America short of people? (Except in the '50's)

Me either. We've been out there doing what we do. You may not like us or what we do but we are democratic. "Remember People's Park in Berkley? Remember the Occupy movement . We are democratic to the bone. But somehow not SNAP .

So SNAP's supposed to appear what, the one exception to leftist history in U.S.? And why such a strong pro-choice bent now?. Remember SNAP does nothing that hasn't been cleared by who knows how many Church P.R. firms. Why make that left bend now? And why always at the worse times. alwayat the worst times WOLaws are up for votes. And there's SNAP pulling a hard left turn and using Ms Smeal to do it.. And again brought to you on a platter by SNAP. Can't you see the consistant downward treck SNAP has placed victims' on. CONSISTANTLY. World without end amen. 24 years of controlling the "victims movement" and now they turn left. NEVER!

They were allowing anti gay and anti abortion in survivors raps. Completely ignoring the fact of us gay people there who were victims ALSO. And SNAP had to be taken to the woodshed at 2 different national SNAP conferences for not knowing how gay folk might feel. And this is in 2003 TWO THOUSAND and THREE and FOUR.

That's 38 YEARS after STONEWALL.

How f'ing left is that?

SNAP is no more left than John Wayne was. On this I swear to your god.

I have only the greatest admiration for those who have the courage to speak up about corruption in an institution we were lead to believe we could trust to care more about children than about protecting predators, their dirty secrets and criminal activities. These are heroes and voices for the countless voiceless victims worldwide.I

Fresh from claims that this or that document dump or case or new venue (Austrialia, most recently) will really show everybody … JR now relays the prediction that things will really start to happen "in the next 10 years". Perhaps I was wrong: perhaps the coconut halves tied to vines tied to empty-crates actually do provide communications. Or perhaps it was a tin-foil hat after all.

JR may join commenter Ecker on his hilltop, fortified with the jug of Kool-Aid and the loaves and fishes for the picnic lunch, waiting for their Certainty to manifest itself for all to see. Some folks have been doing this sort of thing in this country since 1844.

As I said in my most recent comment on the immediately previous article, readers are welcome to weigh the possibilities that such wish-fulfillments will come to pass.

In comments a while back about Doyle and that 1985 proposal he made, I said that he and his team actually had made some very worthwhile points and that it was very regrettable that more wasn't done with it by the hierarchy.

A secondary point was made in the material: that Doyle's Report was nixed by some high-ranking staffer because of the suspicion that he was simply trying to build an empire for himself.

I think that that staffer was accurate in his estimation of Doyle’s personal predispositions. That doesn’t justify the ignoring of the Report, but it does seem borne out by Doyle’s subsequent ‘career’: rather than work within the organization of the Church he chose to build his empire elsewhere. (And yet, again, has never applied for laicization in order to free himself from the Church with which he “is not associated in any way” – which of course is not true, since he remains – by his own choice – an ordained priest of the Church.)

And, as we see, SNAP here demonstrates clearly the reality that the Catholic Abuse Matter and the Stampede has always been fueled by a broad congeries of ‘interests’, few of them actually concerned for the integrity of the Church and the well-being of genuine victims.

In fact, it seems clear now that with the number of abuse allegations so substantially dwindling, SNAP has to now run the risk of revealing that vast sub-surface web of alliances and ‘interests’ in order to Keep The Ball Rolling (and broaden its contributor base, no doubt).

It was a Perfect Storm type of boon to the secularists and – alas – much of the government that there were so many ‘interests’ within the Church, who were more than happy to serve as fronts for that larger secularist gambit to weaken the Church’s credibility and status. (The Beltway could not forget the hefty influence of the Church’s nuclear-war opposition in Reagan’s day; it also had to come up with some ‘Villain’ that could be blamed for the failure of some of its signature impositions – abortion, most notably perhaps – to succeed. Readers of a certain age will realize that 40 or more years ago, very few elite commenters thought that these newly-imposed ‘changes’ would still be highly-contested in the second decade of the next century.)

So the Church here plays not only the role of pinata for ‘victims’ of abuse (however defined), but also the role of Arch-Villain to distract from far more uncongenial thoughts: that some of the marquis secularist impositions of the past decades have failed to be widely accepted in the country. (If they had been, we wouldn’t be having this conversation and various interest-groups wouldn’t nowadays be so fearful that all of their ‘gains’ were still in great danger of being reversed.)

While the surface currents eddy and flow in the cultural life of the country, certain deep currents apparently remain stubbornly stable, despite the political class and cultural elites’ strongest efforts at imposing their agendas. (See my comments about the French Revolution in my latest comment on the immediately previous article.)

Those ‘liberating’ agendas certainly have not ignited a broad and deep and quick acceptance. Doubts continue to exist.

It is easier (necessary, even) to have a single Arch-Villain to blame it all on. And as we have seen, there are all manner of ‘voices’ one can scare up to serve as folksy fronts to keep up the appearances that this is all a ‘democratic’ and ‘popular’ concern and isn’t really about i) elites’ and government’s imposition of ii) bad ideas.

The Church has been in this situation before, and in the not-so-distant past. In continuing to reform herself she simultaneously a) enhances her own integrity and b) serves as a rallying-point for those who do not believe that any human community can survive without a strong grounding in the Metaplane and who do not believe that a purely this-worldly world can sustain itself and who do not believe that a purely this-worldly government can serve as the ultimate source of Meaning and principle.

This self-reform of the Church must continue and intensify.

Meanwhile, let SNAP in its present desperation continue to reveal the Oz-like machinery that has kept it going, casting fresh light on the whole subsurface web of ‘interests’ who, for whatever reasons, need to get the Church out of the way.

ATTRITION! Get it? ATTRITION. Your church is running out of priests. It doesn't take a Cassandra to predict with in the next 10 yrs your system will be forced to change by it's own lack of priests. What don't you get about that?

"I have only the greatest admiration for those who have the courage to speak up about corruption in an institution we were lead to believe we could trust to care more about children than about protecting predators, their dirty secrets and criminal activities. These are heroes and voices for the countless voiceless victims worldwide.I"

Mercifully, cut off mid-thought (-less).

Unless, James was referring to the US public school system. Then, he may have a valid point.

Here's an "unfiltered by the biased media" source for Church growth in Asia, Africa.

Of course, it doesn't neatly fit with the lefts stated hatred of Catholicism, overall, and especially the Church in particular, so you will simply deny it as the lefts does with all facts.

I don't know from where the rest of the commenters rant originates regarding his reading or comprehension abilities (that's more of a self-reflection exercise better done in private).

Let's remember that our "sources" of information are key to the accuracy and truth of any article regarding the Catholic Church. The msm NEVER quotes or interprets our Pope (or any other faithful Catholic) accurately or within context, intentionally.

The lefts source, and basis for their hate-filled diatribes against the Church, is always bigoted lefty media outlets, from which they build their flimsy case for their bigotry on a very faulty foundation ("sand" rather than "rock").

In regard to the comment by JR on the 28th at 1214PM in regard to “attrition” (exaggerated formatting omitted), let me quote from a recent comment on the immediately prior article here:

“Actually, a substantial uptick of older men – meaning in their 30s and 40s and 50s – are coming forward. And I think this is an excellent development: they have had experience of life and the world, will not so easily sink into some sort of hothouse clerical culture, will be able to work with both hierarchy and laity in a more adult and forthright fashion, and have already gone through the growing-pains and complications of younger men. And – having already held jobs in the ‘real world’ – will be ready to accept the many demands of their calling without feeling put-upon and needing as much TLC as younger men require; they can, in the fine Brit phase, ‘get on with it’.”

Publion opening paragraph on the article he wishes you to read states "According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, the population of Catholics in the United States has risen by more than 18 million during the last 40 years. As a result, there is an increasing need for priests to serve the faithful of our Church.

Then once again I will refer you to the statements I placed by YOUR pope on 7/28/13 at 12:07am

Its either snowing or alot of hot air is being blown around where Publion lives, but who would know more about the fate of the church then the man who resides in Vatican City.

This only again shows the sites Publion wants to reference are nothing more then a newspaper ad to sell his failing church.

Need for priests because of an increase in catholics. Your need for priests is because some are going to prison and others who may have thought about going to the seminary who may have received that "calling" are saying "why should I associate myself with the church"

The days when mothers wished for their sons to become priests are gone, and they will NEVER return.

Thank you Dennis, Identity politics has it's problems but they are nothing compared to the hate filled sexist racist world I grew up in. The American people are EMPATHIZING with us. And for that I'm more than grateful. And for your post in particular.

I had been busy with a long comment at the end of the immediately previous article, but I see commenter Ecker has been busy. Let’s see what we have.

In regard to the Pope’s comments I would first note that he spoke privately with the bishops in the context of a visit where millions made their way to attend his outdoor talks and ceremonies.

The Latin American ‘exodus’ toward other religious groups has long been one of concern, and this Pope’s primary pastoral and apostolic experience has been in that region of the world – so there’s no surprise there.

Also, ‘secularism’ – piggybacking in on various bits of modern culture imported from America (and to a lesser extent Europe) – is clearly pulling in an opposite direction from the various non-Catholic groups (primarily fundamentalist and/or syncretist – meaning that people are once again trying to blend in older religious traditions of their region, going back centuries to the various types of animism, blood-sacrifice, and blending of Catholic and those prior-traditional practices and beliefs). Certainly the evangelical-syncretist groups are still searching for religious Meaning.

The Pope does well – I would say – to raise these issues for this region’s bishops and set a course for their sustained deliberations. The key will be to develop a ministry more effectively engaged with people but not one that pretty much gives-away-the-store in order to make itself more attractive as a consumer item.

The fundamentalist approach certainly provides a more ‘quick-burning’ religious experience – in the short term. It does so, often, by appealing to more primal and visceral and immediate human emotions and predispositions. There are great long-term downsides to this approach, so the Church and the regional hierarchies will have to work out a way to reinvigorate Catholic religious experience without tapping into those primal and almost atavistic urges and tendencies, which would serve only to regress the region’s religious life back to much more primal and in some cases primitive times.

I would see this is precisely the sign of a healthy religious organizational approach – one that should have been more quickly embraced in the North American Catholic region (as I discussed in my most recent comment on the previous article). Ecker’s characteristic hope and – worse – his hasty jumping to conclusions in regard to the condition of the Church are what they are and I say let them just hang up there where they were put.

Certainly, since the Pope is working constructively and intelligently and maturely toward a re-forming and re-invigorating of that region’s religious ministry then he cannot be sanely construed as an “anti-Catholic bigot”, especially of the unthinking and perhaps crazed variety. The same cannot be said of certain strains of commentary we have seen on this site.

I had mentioned an article in regard to the new types of seminarians in a comment (29th at 351AM) on this thread. I will include the article link again at the bottom of this comment and my comment on the article is already up here on this thread.

I cannot make out the sense of somebody’s idea that “if you have those statements of others you don’t have to be Hemingway”. But it does sound like some sort of justification for the Proof-texting and Mental Shoebox approach, about which I have commented at length recently. Nor would I advise anybody to presume that simply ‘having’ “those statements of others” relieves one from the responsibility of competently assessing the worth of such “statements” (whatever they may be).

Ecker then addresses me on the 29th at 944AM.

Ecker then somehow connects the CARA observation that there is a need for more priests in the Church with the afore-mentioned papal comments … and somehow draws the conclusion that (as best one can determine from his written material here) that the Pope has sort of mostly admitted that the Church is in dire straits and not-long-for-this-world and my own linked-to article from Georgetown actually goes that way too.

Where to begin dealing with the primitive logic he deploys here? The US military is in need of troops and the Marines have always been looking for a few good ones … so may we then conclude decisively therefrom that both the military and the Marines specifically are organizationally on the way out?

We also can read the article and see where Georgetown’s CARA organization is going with its initial (and non-lethal) observation. Readers are welcome to consider whether the Pope or CARA are preparing people for the imminent demise of the Church or are even simply describing a problem for which they can see no workable solution.

And Ecker then notes on his own that the Catholic population in the US has “risen by more than 18 million” in the past 40 years. So clearly Ecker is having trouble keeping his mental train on the rails here.

And he then informs us – perhaps from tin-foil or coconut messages – that the reason for the decline in the number of priests is simply that “many who may have received that ‘calling’ are saying ‘why should I associate myself with the church” – an assertion for which he provides no factual backup. Does he keep up that wide a correspondence with the many persons who apparently think about being priests and then quietly decide not-to because they don’t want to be associated with the Church? Or are we just getting messages from the coconuts here?

Then, having used the material in the article I referenced for his own purposes, he now goes and says that such sites “are nothing more then [sic] a newspaper ad to sell his failing church”. As opposed, I would imagine, to Ecker’s own newspapery-‘ads’ to convince people that the Church is in extremis and we are welcome to join him on his hilltop awaiting the End (Kool-Aid limited, so BYOB).

And we also advised – again probably by the coconut telegraph – that mothers no longer wish for their sons to become priests. And – probably from the Wig of Future Assurance – we are also informed that those days “will NEVER return” (exaggerated formatting not omitted; when your point isn’t strong, yell it and that will make it stronger, apparently).

I don’t know who in comments here has been hoping for any “days” to “return”. The Pope and CARA seem robustly focused on the future – although a future that seems more grounded in actuality than the Church-less fantasies embraced or urged or demanded (take your pick) by Ecker.

Then at 1008AM on the 29th Ecker relies on the Pope as a reliable source of information – how nice, if uncharacteristic.

Apparently the Pope has said “who am I to judge” anyone “who searches for the Lord and has goodwill”.

As a result of which I am supposed to be throwing my computer across the room (something that happens often chez Ecker and JR?).

The Pope has said a) he does not see himself as one to “judge” b) persons who search for the Lord and has goodwill”.

Presuming the accuracy of the report, I am not sure why I would need to throw my computer across the room. I haven’t been involved in discussions here about homosexuality. Although I think the material in (b) doesn’t quite fit much of the material presented by certain commenters here and that goes quite a way to rendering Ecker’s point somewhat irrelevant.

I myself have assessed the conceptual and thought-processing quality of much material that has appeared in comments on this site. In which case I am not morally judging anybody but simply pointing out that they can’t throw a baseball as well as they seem to think they can (when they aren’t actually trying to toss a Pop Warner football from far left field to second-base to make the play they desire). But that’s something altogether different from what the Pope is talking about. Which again makes Ecker’s point rather irrelevant. Unless one presumes that if one’s material is not instantly and totally accepted then one is personally judged and rejected – but that is not a problem within my ability to resolve.

All of which goes to my prior discussions about the dynamics of the internet: you can wind up with a lot of people who aren’t really used to thinking, who yet want to keep asserting their material and probably under the strong impression that they must be listened-to or else … (fill in the blank). But that’s the challenge of reading and sifting material on the Web and it is what it is.

Lastly, from the Ecker comment of the 29th at 1122, I have to point out again the disturbing tendency to resort to imagery of violence and death, especially in regard to persons whom he doesn’t like. In this case the Pope is connected rather clearly and specifically with “choking on his own words”, although – also characteristically – the idea is couched as a faux-pious hope that such a thing doesn’t actually happen.

There are types of professionally-run groups that exist in this world where such a comment would draw some very careful scrutiny, and not at all of a positive nature.

You can't pretend to anyone; that if the Pope changes his mind about Gays or abortion or married priests or women priests that you wouldn't fall all over yourselves to obey him. Admit you would. Tell the truth and shame the devil.

With in the next 10 years something will have to give you are losing the attrition game. Priest wise. Something's got to give

I think religion is a lot like superstition, hedging bets, luck seekers, stuff seekers. health seekers love seekers.( I have 3 happy recovering addicts working on the house and they are happy. I wouldn't change that if I could. Krishna's are happy I like happy people and if religion makes you happy well I'am happy about that. I mean it).

But religion as fact hunhun

Religion seems more like: "What ever the imagination allows. And I personally love imagination but I know it's not real. I don't imagine a traffic light's green when it's red. (though I have tried.)

So how can we share a planet happily and healthfully and ecologically. That's share not serve. SHARE To me that's a very important question that religious and non religious alike should have front and center.

Another property bubble is on the rise in L.A. almost 30% since last year at this time and it too will end badly. Why? Nothings been done law wise to not have a reoccurence of a bubble.

I agree about language of violence but I'm not Dennis and this is the net and we are all on the curve in terms of perfection so lets cut some slack and not get all fearful, shall we.

We are all just people here. Which on one level is really pretty cool. It's our now; it's all we've got. IMHO

What married and/or female priests, priest vocation status, gay "marriage", parishioners status and abortion has to do with the whiney-gripe of the self-identifying clergy "victims", no one [logical] will ever know.

Unless, we eliminate their claimed cause celeb regarding minor abuse as the driver and replace it with pure, unadulterated antiCatholic bigotry.

It is not my intention for anyone to fear me or think I am violent. What would that accomplish ?

In this country there are very few documented cases of clergy abuse survivors or their family members who have gone out to seek revenge on their abuser in a violent way. Although the attacks the victim went through were violent.

The last case that I know of happened in the state of California when a man after 40 years went after his abuser because of the abuse him and his brother received at the hands of this priest when they were I believe five and six year olds. (Time does not heal all wounds) and the only other case which has been talked about recently is the priest killed in prison not by his victim but by another inmate.

Publion does have such a wild imagination for him to say those things about me, HE DOES NOT KNOW ME. I am a great judge of character and I pat myself on the back for having that gift now, I only wish I had it years ago i would most likely not be here commenting on a subject such as this. But, Publion by his writings alone show he wants to be a colorful individual and by the length of his comments he wants to dominate this site.

I cannot change his or anyone elses thinking of me and in my book that's o.k. Because in the end the only people who I truly care about the way they think of me is my family and friends. Not anyone here on this site.

A couple of observations on the spate of comments following my most recent one.

First I note commenter Ecker’s (29th at 1008PM) curious addition: that I think he is Oz-like and “almighty and powerful”. I did not in any point in my text suggest that. The point I brought up – as delicately as I could – was that this tendency of his to connect death (vivid and violent) with persons with whom he disagrees is disturbing but characteristic of his material.

Notice that rather than deal with that somewhat difficult observation, commenter Ecker then went and created a different issue for himself, one that is far more congenial and yet is something I never mentioned or raised in my observation: that he is “almighty and powerful”. Thus he can compliment himself – after a fashion – while simultaneously a) appearing to deal with my observation and b) feel better by fending off the actual gravamen of my observation. And it appears that being “almighty and powerful” is something that for commenter Ecker is indeed an enjoyable imagining.

I think if this train of thought goes any further it is going to go toward places that are not proper material for commentary here, so I won’t pursue it further. But I offer these present observations as illustrative of what readers can run into in Web commentary.

And he concludes his comment – again characteristically – with an attack couched as a faux-pious hope: that I will get a brain. Charming. I can assure him a have spent and continue to spend a great deal of time and energy honing the one I have; and that not being “almighty and powerful” that effort requires a sustained effort that has become something of a life-discipline. One that I could recommend pursuing to the best of one’s abilities.

In regard to JR’s surmises about religion (30th at 1225AM).

First: being “happy” as an object or goal of “religion” raises more questions than it answers. What does it mean to be “happy”. Perhaps non-recovered addicts also feel “happy” – what does one do with that? Who is to ‘judge’ them and tell them that they need to change? In order to do more than reduce “religion” to a ‘feeling’ – and those things come and go and are highly mutable in humans – then one needs to do some serious thinking about what the purpose of the human being is, such that s/he will actually achieve ‘fulfillment’ (the “happy” bit simply follows the achievement of some level of genuine fulfillment and is not a goal in itself). A cargo-cult native might ‘feel happy’ having an abandoned refrigerator as a couch for his/her hut, but actually has no real idea of what the refrigerator could do if it were made to actually perform according to its purposes. One might simply leave the native with that ‘happiness’, such as it is, but you can quickly see where the native can be ‘happy’ and still have no actual grasp of the potentialities s/he is near but about which s/he has no conception.

Second: clearly Catholicism’s concept of religion is nothing like “whatever the imagination allows”. If it were then anybody could imagine anything they wanted to imagine and it would be ‘Catholic’. And it is precisely the objection of some to Catholicism that it has too many conceptual requirements (let alone the ‘rules’). It has been Catholicism’s ministry to combine the human need for Meaning with the human ability to ‘imagine’ – but in such a way as to harness those characteristic energies and needs to an accurate perception of the nature of God and of themselves as God’s creatures and of the nature of a human community of Faith communally dedicated to living out life along those lines.

Other religious approaches and other religions have indeed tried to take a less-demanding approach: giving freer rein to ‘imagination’ and calling whatever thereby pops up as ‘religious’. Indeed, liberal Protestantism – especially in this country and widely so since the mid-60s – has gone down that road. And – as the Vatican has always feared – significant chunks of American Catholic thought and practice has bent in that direction in that same timeframe.

But simply using one’s imagination in order to ‘feel happy’ is not all there is to it in the Catholic Vision.

And lastly, in regard to the Pope’s comments about gays (he will not “judge” gays who “search for the Lord and have goodwill” does not reflect – as far as I can see – his ‘changing his mind’ about gays. One can’t get that conclusion out of what he says unless one presumes that when he uses “search for the Lord” and “have goodwill” he is simply using unusual words to agree with one’s own feelings and thoughts about homosexuality. But a) if his phrase “search for the Lord” presumes a Catholic context and if his phrase “have goodwill” presumes a Catholic context, then I would say that he is trying to change the tone of the discourse but hasn’t actually “changed his mind” such that he is now papally asserting that anything ‘gay’ is now OK.

And b) he may well be addressing ‘gays’ generally but not specifically Catholic gays. Meaning that he is – again – trying for pastoral reasons to change the tone of the discourse but is not papally asserting a full and complete reversal of Catholic thought and practice. (This would make more sense, I think: Francis is not so untutored a churchman as to suddenly reverse a currently significant segment of Catholic thought and practice simply in a speech delivered at a (highly-publicized and perhaps largely attended) public event.)

There is certainly a conflicted area here: the Catholic Vision’s reliance on the Biblical procreation principle from (as I once mentioned a while ago here) one of the two Creation stories of Adam and Eve creates – in these days – a conflict as to the rightness of homosexuality as a human orientation (which is distinct from the selection of a particular lifestyle, as I also said: it is one thing to be homosexual and another thing to present oneself regularly and definitively to the world in a Carmen Miranda outfit, so to speak).

The core issue here is the question of sexual orientation (is one actually born with it; is it a characteristic of humanness or is it the equivalent of simply being born with a dysfunction; is it something that will contribute to human fulfillment or is it simply a distraction – as is any sexual activity when engaged-in merely for its own sake). These are fundamental issues which to which science itself has not been able to contribute any definitive answers. The ‘relationship’ emphasis in that second Creation story of Adam and Eve might open up more space here – theologically and conceptually – and possibly Francis is going to be looking more closely at that.

But to say that he has “changed his mind” about homosexuality is an assertion that cannot be legitimately conceptually derived from his comments as I have seen them here (I haven’t seen the full text of his speech).

And to suggest – as has been done here – that the Pope’s ‘changing his mind’ is yet more definitive evidence that the whole Catholic Vision is collapsing (and the Church with it) is something more on the lines of a crack-dream – if I may be vivid.

As I write this comment, there are no prior ones up today and my immediately previous comment from this morning is still waiting in the moderation queue.

I have not been able to locate a transcript of the Pope’s remarks but I have looked over some of the reports.

As far as I can determine, the Pope was on the flight back to Rome. He deliberately raised the issue while he was walking around the main cabin talking to reporters (according the front page article in the Wall Street Journal today).

He apparently was referring to ‘gay’ priests.

His point was that if they were of a homosexual orientation but were not sexually active and were living a “virtuous and chaste life” then who was he “to judge them?”.

These latter two points are valuable because – it seems to me – they are not congruent with the general contemporary position that a life full of ‘gay’ sex is fulfilling and OK; I can’t imagine much ‘gay’ thinking (as it is popularly conceived) embracing a “virtuous and chaste life” for all persons of that orientation. In fact, precisely the opposite: the past decades’ worth of gay thought’s objection to the Church is deeply enmeshed with the free and full exercise of sex, which itself is deeply enmeshed with the Boomery idea that sex is great recreation and an essential aspect of one’s liberation if not also of one’s civil rights and that your sex life is nobody’s business but your own. (Since –using Bentham’s fundamentally ill-defined calculus – you aren’t ‘harming’anybody.)

And the Pope also said he was not in agreement with the idea that one’s sexual orientation primarily defined one’s “person” or one’s self and self-hood. Again, this is not an idea congenial to i) gay or straight Boomery thought, which presumes the vital centrality of sexual experience nor to ii) the political requirements of Identity Politics as they apply to gays: that the ‘identity’ of the gays (conceived of as a group) requires a sustained focus on that gay ‘identity’ in order to keep up political clout and pressure. Which cannot but also draw gay sexual activity and experience into the center of a gay person’s sense of self and personhood.

So, as I said in my prior comment, I think this is more an effort to change the tone rather than the substance of the overall discourse.

But for priests and bishops it does raise the possibility that if one is living life as the Pope describes it and conducting one’s ministry accordingly, then one needn’t be quite so fearful of possible Vatican ‘searches’ for any cleric who is of that orientation. Which is no small thing, I would imagine, for the clerics concerned.

Bringing the discussion closer to the focus of the TMR site, I think that the Pope’s requirement for a “chaste and virtuous life” certainly isn’t going to weaken the ethos established by the Dallas Reforms - and to that we must factor in the very notable decline in allegations (for which the weakening of Statutes of Limitations might well be nothing more than an effort to re-prime the pump for the torties and whomever hasn’t yet considered having a go at the piñata).

No one minds you being vivid; it's your being wrong that's the problem.

All religion is based in imagination if it were based in fact there would be obvious irrevefutable evidence not only of a god's existance but proof for all that the catholic god version is the correct god. You do not have any evidence for any of your religious beliefs. That's why they are called beliefs. So whether your god has a son, or a mother or can preform miracles is nothing but imagination without having any proof of those beings ever being true.

Apparently my comment of the 31st at 959AM and commenter Ecker’s of 952AM were submitted almost simultaneously.

I had said that I am not going down a certain road and I am not. But I will respond to the material that commenter Ecker has provided – which, as I have often said, is all that I work with on this site.

The “violent” to which I have referred need not be any overt tendency to physical violence, nor did I ever suggest that it was. It is, rather, an internal but clear predisposition toward violence in one’s feelings – which, in commenter Ecker’s material is then also plastered-over with a quasi/faux pious presentation.

Imagine, for example, if after an exchange on some matter, somebody were to say to you: ‘Well, we don’t agree at all and I certainly hope that you don’t go out now and get hit by a truck and then squashed like a bug and the whole bleeding mess then set on fire by gas that leaked from the truck’s tank that turns you into an overroasted marshallow heap of glop.’ You would, I think, sense rather quickly that although this hope was grammatically couched in the negative, yet the speaker was clearly deeply involved with some rather vivid and violent fantasies, focused rather clearly.

Whether the speaker realizes that about him/herself is another question altogether. Which brings us to what has become a familiar trope in the past few decades: you don’t know me (usually delivered with an exclamation point but in commenter Ecker’s material delivered with exaggerated formatting and in the third person referring to me: “HE DOES NOT KNOW ME”).

I think that this phrase and concept has arisen in contemporary popular usage because of the tendency of much post-‘60s thought to dismiss any commonality or uniformity among people (in order to reduce the strength of i) ‘traditional’ claims of human nature or essence and ii) in order to deflect objections to one’s personal preferred acts or beliefs or desires). Thus, if confronted with disapproval or objection or speculation as to why one was doing or saying this or that, one might simply claim ‘you don’t know me’ – meaning that one is a totally unique and totally complex individual and thus no other person could possibly have any grounds for doubting or disapproving what they – one presumes – have no way of knowing anything about.

But if that were true then there wouldn’t be any psychological profession and literature would not be of any use in helping to understand human nature.

So I would say this: from the material I have seen I have made the observations I have made (and I have explained those observations and how I formed them) and I stand by them. I don’t have a “wild imagination” and I certainly haven’t gone and ‘imagined’ what I have observed and explained; nor would I gratuitously do so – I have worked with the material that has been put up by commenter Ecker.

We then get an assurance that Ecker is “a great judge of character and I pat myself on the back for having that gift now”. I will only say that if that if he does – as he believes – possess that skill, then it is always good practice to use that skill in examining oneself. Perhaps some of those sessions in front of the bathroom mirror could be less about Wigs and more about deploying his purported character-analysis skills. Because his material here and his self-assessment (as implied here) do not seem as congruent as he apparently thinks they are.

And I also note that he starts off this comment with the presumption that others might fear him – thus he wants to reassure everyone. This is a remarkably practiced gambit: a) I didn’t say or imply that I feared his physical violence – which assumption of his gives him the opportunity to don the role of Assurer and Comforter as well as the role of Misunderstood and Misjudged victim. Rather b) I was trying – as delicately as possible – to signal that I thought there were some serious interior incongruences and disconnects, as evidenced – clearly, to me – by the remarks in his material as I had explained here at some length.

While one might presume that commenter Ecker simply isn’t good at reading comprehension, I would say that instead we see a rather long-practiced ability (perhaps no longer even requiring conscious thought) to deflect and transmute uncongenial self-information into something more congenial. Which is what it is and I will not go further.

And I will also say that my observations drawn-from and based-on Ecker’s material are too easily characterized as (merely) my “thinking” about him. I really don’t spend time just coming up with ‘thoughts’ about people; I consider the material they submit and then formulate responses and observations as carefully and accurately as I can. And I prefer to work with the conceptual aspects of material; although in some cases where commenters reveal relevant bits about themselves (whether they realize it or not) then I will draw whatever useful insights might be gleaned from that.

I have – as always – no way of knowing if anybody claiming to be a victim in comments here is a genuine victim or is otherwise-classifiable, so I would not be thinking of victim-revenge as an operative element here with Ecker.

I also note Ecker’s assertion that “by [my] writings alone show [I want] to be a colorful individual and by the length of [my] comments [I want] to dominate this site”. In the first place, writing long and involved comments is no way to get a reputation as “colorful” and indeed I have been recently characterized by one of Ecker’s valentine-partners as “boring!”. In the second place, I write long and involved comments because the issues we are dealing with here are serious and complex and because I want to counter the far-too-frequent internet tendency to toss off one-liners and ill-conceived bits as if they were definitive and useful summations of the issues. In the third place I have no wish to “dominate” this site and welcome exchange – especially counterpoint exchange, because it gives the readership more material to consider; but I do analyze everything that is put up and try to give my best thoughts on the matter (for which I have been accused by another commenter – who also doesn’t find it congenial to have his material looked-at closely – of trying to presume to “educate” the readership from a position of superiority). I can only assure the readership that I am not attempting to do any of those things and leave it to the readership to decide. Anybody, of course, is perfectly capable of ignoring my material if they wish and I do not demand affirmation or agreement of readers in response to my material.

The Geoghan case is one we have recently discussed.

The other case was the one that happened in Santa Clara, CA a year or two ago and was discussed at great length in comments here at that time (June, 2012). It was a dodgy case to begin-with, and at its end the jurors did not wish to discuss it but – as some might recall – a local attorney tried to paper-over all of the problems by concocting an explanation for the verdict that exonerated the local judge, the local prosecutor, the local police, the local jurors, the ‘victim’ who was actually the perpetrator of the assault – and blamed it all on the actual victim in the case, the elderly priest whom the perpetrator had sought out after decades. And in yet another similarity to what we have more recently seen in Philadelphia with the Billy-Doe case, the entire matter was transacted in a Congressional District deeply entwined with the national Democratic Congressional leadership (seated just north in San Francisco) and the actual Congressman for the District also a ranking member of the Democratic Congressional leadership.

If anyone's having a "go" at a pinata. It's you . The pinata your swinging at is the moral consciences of conservative( usually less educated intellectually or religiously, than you P). Catholics like D who think 4000 new seminary applicants show that the church is on the rise again

. Why don't you tell D that 4000 new seminarians won't even make a dent in the church's need for priests in America. You know it won't.

Sex is the most goofy; whacky; difficult; rewarding; fullfilling; depressing; healing and funny element in human life. And since as an atheist I don't believe it to be a magical but a biological drive, it seems that carrying on our gene's (as long as we and the planet last) is all what being alive is about. Just like the rest of the animals. We exist to reproduce but if we don't that's bad? No even the church says that it can. Can sex be used for pleasure with out reproduction? The church says it can if it's inside marriage.

Believe me the whole world knows what the church "thinks" and demands about sex.

Yet still we gays are born into Catholic families. We still are recreated over and over again by your god, but somehow our having sex for pleasure is wrong.

In ancient Sparta young males not having sex with each other was considered socially wrong The exact opposite of todays "norm". It seems to me sexuality at times can be arbitrary; depending on it's social matrix. Foucault showed this to be true in his History of Sexuality.

In what way can the discussion or and questioning of assertions and of ideas constitute an attack on “the moral consciences” (is there some other kind?) of persons?

And of “conservative” persons? Are we now informed that JR and others of that group constitute the “conservative” presence on this site?

Then JR characterizes his group as “usually less educated intellectually or religiously” than I am. Is this the same JR who recently asserted with satisfaction that he had educated himself the same way the Brits at university do, through “reading”? Are these persons “less educated religiously”? If so whose fault is that? There are plenty of books and courses out there.

And if they do see themselves as “less educated religiously” then why are they continually dabbling in religious commentary here? And not only dabbling but making the most overt and sweeping assertions? And lastly, why would persons who acknowledge themselves to be a bit behind the curve in terms of education still go and make and go on making so many flat-out sweeping assertions?

Then we are informed that 4000 new seminarians “won’t even make a dent in the church’s need for priests in America”. And is JR that well up to speed on the logistics of priestly assignments in the Church in the US that he can make such an assertion? ON what grounds does he make that assertion?

And then he asks me to tell another commenter about that because – he asserts – I “know it won’t” make a difference to have 4000 new seminarians. If he could quote anything from my material where I demonstrated that ‘knowledge’ I’d like to see it. Or am I now being given messages and instructions relayed from the Coconut Telegraph?

As I have said before, the first real mark of education is to not-make sweeping statements about matters for which one’s knowledge or supporting evidence are not able to provide demonstrable support. In other words, to know what one doesn’t know and to not-pretend that one does know. One can ask intelligent questions but that’s a far cry from making sweeping assertions that one cannot support. But that’s part of the education process – a more vital part – that is not available through reading and collecting factoids on 3×5 cards in the Mental Shoebox.

Then at 301PM there’s more.

A bumper-sticker burble that has to do with sex being the “most” (fill in the blank) “element in human life”. This is a Boomery and Me-Generation dodge of classic proportions: no need to think-things-through; just roll off a whole bunch of your preferred adjectives and agree to let it all hang out and shame on those who think ill of it.

I don’t know who said it was “magical” – it certainly wasn’t in any of my material. We are informed – and accurately – that it is “a biological drive” – but then so is aggression and the violence necessary to support aggression’s objectives … what’s the point here? So is eating … but does that mean that because it’s “a biological drive” it can have no limits? So is sleeping , but … ditto.

And if – in the atheist Gameplan – we are only here to fulfill our biological drives then it’s only a question of whether we sex or agress or sleep ourselves to death. And this is “all what being alive is about”?

Then JR’s mental train seems to leave the rails: “We exist to reproduce but if we don’t that’s bad?” What does that mean in the context of this comment? Is JR implying somehow that if we don’t do what “we exist to” do then that isn’t a “bad” thing? And then “Not even the Church says that it can” – can what?

“Can sex be used for pleasure without reproduction?” There is that second Creation story in which God creates Eve to be a companion for Adam – as I have mentioned in prior comments. Possibly the Church might allow that second story more weight. But the Church has always been aware of two difficulties with humans and the exercise of the sexual-reproductive urge: First, in humans – unlike most animals – the sexual urge is connected to the human powers of imagination and desire, which can create an almost addictive allure to what is – as JR says – basically “a biological urge” designed in most of the animal kingdom to achieve reproduction and nothing more. But in humans sexual activity can easily become something far more and if it’s not well-managed then – like nuclear power – it can get out of control very easily.

Second, sex is not the most basic reason why humans arealive. They have capacities of mind and soul (that urge for Meaning and not simply ‘meaning’) that clearly require serious concentration on how those capacities might be fulfilled. Surely the travails and derangements of contemporary ‘hook-up’ culture offer clear suggestions – indications even – of the flat wasteland that life becomes when sex becomes the primary defining element of the person. Unless of course humans are nothing more than animals.
I really can’t credit the assertion that “the whole world knows what the Church ‘thinks’ and demands about sex”. Surely, JR clearly does not. And once again, he undermines his own demand that he be believed.

Whether he reduces the “atheist” position on sex to incoherence or whether he accurately conveys an incoherent position … is anybody’s guess. Is there an official “atheist” dogma or doctrine on sex? Or is it to be whatever the individual “atheist” declares it to be? Perhaps the atheists need to get together and define their doctrine. But then, that would make them sort of a church … or something.

And then the late Foucault (died of AIDS-related issues in 1984) is brought in (or rather, the title of one of his books is mentioned). Apparently the point is that “sexuality at times can be arbitrary depending on its social matrix”. Which is true – as far as it goes but what’s the point here? That because the ancient Spartans had one idea and the Church has developed (rather comprehensively) another idea … then … what? What’s the conclusion to be drawn from this observation? That since two different cultures each developed different ideas about X, then there is no way to judge their efficacy? Or accuracy? Or – in any case – since we are not ancient Spartans and but are members of a Western culture so heavily influenced by the Church then what is the relevance of what the ancient Spartans thought? The Soviets initially wanted to do away with marriage altogether (in order to have children raised Correctly in Soviet communal-orphanages) but had to give up the idea when the Russian people resisted it too strongly for even Lenin’s methods to be able to impose it on them.

Or is Foucault being introduced here as a proof-text but without any serious discussion to explain just what ‘proof’ we are supposed to find in it?

Or perhaps this was just something on one of the 3×5 cards in the Mental Shoebox under S for Sex.

And why would the restrictions be “arbitrary”? How is that term defined and used here? Foucault was heavily invested in the concept of how power can influence belief in society – but if memory serves he didn’t consider the ‘power’ of tradition as rising up from below (from the people themselves) and focused almost solely on power as being imposed on the people from above, from ‘structures’ of power. But it is equally important to consider that what Gramsci tried to explain as ‘hegemony’ (i.e. that people are so indoctrinated with structures of power and belief that their beliefs ‘seem natural’) was actually the manifestation of some profoundly deep Sense within a people, from which their traditions organically spring (rather than merely being imposed from above by those ‘structures of power’).

Thus, then, bringing us to the Church in the West (and especially the US) in the past half-century: has a) the Church merely imposed some ‘alien’ belief on people? Or b) has the Church somehow given Shape to some profoundly deep communal Sense among people? It would seem that (a) requires a most amazingly and even superhuman organization – far more successful in its machinations than even the French Revolutionaries or the Soviet regime in Russia – of almost incomprehensible power and strategic acumen.

But if (b) then the Church is seen as the institutionalized expression of some profound and organic Sense among people and peoples.
But for the secularizing American elites and the government that has indentured itself to them (according to Dutton’s vision, mentioned in prior comments) the Church must be the Villain: the evil manipulative force that is the only real major reason why so much of the secularizing New Order is still highly-contested and resisted after half-a-century. Because if there is no evil Villain, then the possibility has to be considered that resistance to the imposition of the New Order of secularism is coming from some profound base within the people themselves.

Spontaneous resistance to the valorization of homosexuality in Africa is proving a deep problem for the Anglican polity, whose ‘missionaries’ are elites who preach the conventional Western elite Correct position. Where is that spontaneous resistance coming from? Not from the Vatican – whose ‘structural’ influence in Africa has not been strong.

The bigots don't like facts and usually challenge them or change the subject, but, they remain facts just the same. Seminarian enrollment increased, period.

An interesting lesson in just how the left distorts, twists and lies is how the fact that seminarians are on the rise is linked to growth of the Church (in US, in Brazil, worldwide?). That claim is being made by the lefty-antiCatholic bigot(s) here – not by me. No such extrapolation was made by me. This conclusion, as attributed to me, is just another figment of the leftist-atheist wild imagination, the same fantasm that imagines that all priests are pedophiles (instead of just a minority subset of deviant homosexuals); that imagines that the Catholic Church is engrosssed in a worldwide conspiratorial coverup of "everything" since the beginning of their establishment (lets go way back to St. Peter); that imagines the universe and life itself banged itself into existence (chuckle-chuckle); and that imagines that the lefties (socialist-communist-atheist-liberal-progressive) have the solutions to the worlds social and environmental problems (outright belly-laugh).

So, aside from the usual resident nasties – the good news is that 3.5M youth-young adults rallied with the Pope in Brazil….but, not much (if any?) positive coverage in the msm?

Dave, it appears Mr. Neuhaus has his own ax to grind, a catholic one. He , like Pub goes on at great length but still doesn't say much. He simply claims Boswell wrong; and quotes Paul. and one or two reviewers of Boswell And then, like D declares his position "true" angrily. By crediting Thomas Aquinas who was around 1000 ce as an authority historicaly compared to the early Christians who according to real historic records weren't so homogenuous as the church later became..

Obviously a system could not tranform from the pagan to the christian overnight in terms of same sex sexuality.

People, culture had to slowly adapt and or be adapted from the "yehaw" sexuallity of pagan days (Though the bible in the OT says it's o.k. to have sex slaves.[ if you treat them "nice" I guess?]) to the new world order of sexual shame and guilt re enforced by Augustine; Aquinas and their followers.

I have read the Neuhaus review. After several paragraphs he launches into a lengthy review of relevant New Testament texts, historical issues, and various objections raised by contemporary theology, Protestant as well as Catholic. Thus JR’s typical toss-off characterization of Neuhaus (he “still doesn’t say much”) is incomprehensible once you have read the Neuhaus article. There are substantial issues and questions that are raised and discussed, with references to various other scholars (hardly characterizable as “one or two reviewers”) from several relevant fields.

>Neuhaus also raises the interesting point about “advocacy scholarship”, one of the many mutant varieties that have sprung up in the past half-century (“advocacy” science, journalism, law, and such) which are based merely on the idea that the researcher/scholar/practitioner should first take a personal position on behalf-of one side of the question and only then look at the relevant material to be studied under the influence of that predisposition(prejudice or pre-judgment, if you wish). Worse, there is a strong whiff of the presumption that since you are no doubt ‘advocating’ in a ‘good cause’, then merely ‘objective’ study – with its rules of evidence (does that sound familiar?) and investigation need not be closely followed since they might well only serve to ‘obstruct’ the good work in the good cause which you are trying to accomplish.

I would like some quotation to justify a) the assertion that Neuhaus merely “declares his position ‘true’ angrily”. If one were of a psychological bent, one might sense here some good old-fashioned psychological ‘projection’ on JR’s part, since here he more accurately describes his own modus operandi than Neuhaus.

And once again we see a shadowy and ill-stated form of the remarkably un-historical thought that the “early Christians” (to the extent we can know what they thought and practiced) were not “so homogeneous” (spelling corrected from the original) and that Aquinas, coming along a millennium later, was and remains a dubious source of Christian thought and praxis.

This stance is one borrowed from 19th century fundamentalist and liberal theology, which – having dispensed with the Church – then had to create for themselves a substitute Ground of authority, and thus they created the image of a totally accessible and coherent ‘primitive Christian community’ and the inerrant Bible. But there is a) tremendous historical complication involved in trying to ascertain what that community actually thought and did and b) the unhappy fact that it was not until the third century A.D. that the Church actually canonized the New Testament by declaring what Books were to be included and what (there were many) books were not to be included. So the very existence of the New Testament stems from the Church herself; those early Christian communities had no such canonical clarity as to just what was and wasn’t ‘the Bible’.

The Church played a vital role in the on-going development of Christian doctrine. And in doing so, there were avoided both the Scylla of a rigid and un-changing fixation on 1st century belief and thought and the Charybdis of an anything-goes approach to Christian belief (and in fundamentalist and liberal Protestant theology we see subsequent belief-groups respectively crashing intone or the other those rocks). The Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has provided the dynamic developmental element that has simultaneously enabled Catholicism to change and yet to retain its essential core shape.

JR is on to something with his admission that “obviously a system could not transform from the pagan to the Christian overnight”. If he were to follow that thought for any distance he would have to realize just how complex and formidable a task the Church faced as various tribal and political groups were included in the Christian community. And this was as true in the 16th and 17th century New World missions as it was in the numerous missions throughout Europe and Asia Minor in the earliest centuries. (And this dynamic also – as I have said in prior comments – extended to the Church’s expansion in the English (as opposed to the Spanish or French) New World and the United States in the 19th century.

And are we to now believe that the post-Stonewall era did not re-introduce (or regress, if you prefer) sexual-activity matters back to the “yehaw”? Was not the essential Boomery approach to sexual-activity not something not very far from ‘yeeee-hawwwwww!’ (speaking the lines of a character in I-forget-which film, Jason Robards called it “a sexual philosophy somewhere to the left of Whoooopeeee”). Are there within the precincts of modern ‘gay’ thought some places where “chaste and virtuous” would be received respectfully? I am not expert in this area, but I rather think not.

And indeed, Boswell, as well as Foucault, became unavailable for subsequent scholarly controversy about their work when they both died of AIDS-related issues. It is what it is.

Then at 1219 on the 1st JR raises the interesting and highly problematic term “natural”. What does this term mean? Does it mean a) ‘natural because it is what usually happens’ or does it mean b) ‘natural in the sense that it is within the genuine character as ‘naturally’ Created by God’ … ? These are two very very different meanings of ‘natural’. One is welcome to go with the former, but that quickly regresses one (and everyone) back to Hobbes and primitivism (whatever humans are driven to do by their biological urges is ‘natural’). Or one can go with the latter: that there is a genuine nature and essence to humans and they must always struggle to bring their ‘bio-natural’ selves (if you will) into congruence with their ‘theo-natural’ selves. Readers are welcome to consider these alternatives and decide for themselves.

If JR can explain the origin and source of the human need for Meaning without some reference to the (b) position; if he can derive the origin and source for the human need for Meaning from – say – nothing more than evolution on the Monoplane, then let him share that thinking with us. I’d like to see that.

And where does he derive grounds for the assertions that readers here largely like the Fox News approach? I don’t. To me, the original Murdoch Fox News approach is simply ‘advocacy journalism’ from the Right rather than the Left, and is therefore equally unreliable for anyone trying to get a solid and comprehensive grasp on what is actually going on.

I include at the end of this comment three links to reviews of Boswell’s work, especially his book Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, published about two decades ago.

The first link is to a Fordham University (a Jesuit school) review that is very complimentary but still can’t avoid the problems with Boswell’s historical work.

The others are less laudatory but go into serious detail.

One thing that becomes clear is that the Byzantine practice of “adelphopoeisis” requires a competent grasp of – who can be surprised? – Byzantine culture and theological thought, and language, all from over a millennium ago. It appears that there is substantial difference between that Byzantine ceremony and what we today would call ‘marriage’ and that is explained in the latter two links.

To me it has always seemed a remarkably shrewd ecclesiastical and liturgical (Byzantine and to an even more fuzzy extent Latin Catholic) attempt to reduce the feuding between families/clans with which those centuries were rife: two men from different clans formally adopted each other as ‘brothers’ (the “adelpho” in the term) and by doing so united the clans – which meant that at least theoretically they could not war on each other and had to share resources and assets as well as treat each other as ‘family’ in terms of loyalty and comity. Not a bad approach at all, I would say. But it is hell-and-gone from ‘gay marriage’ as that issue exists today.

If nothing else, these reviews give us an inkling of just how complex historical research is, and how even more difficult it is to accurately draw comparisons between historical events and issues which are topical to people today. Surely more of a challenge than anybody’s Mental Shoebox can possibly meet definitively, accurately, and successfully.

Interesting how the debate about the msm bias against the church, as evidenced by the dishonest reporting about the clergy abuse matter, always gets twisted into gay rights, privelages and entitlements, and a host of other lefty gripes.

Nah- none of this phony hype against the Church is really designed to punish or undermine her traditional-conservative (natural) social philosophy. Nope, I'll just never believe it.

Boswell must have been a member of the APA when homosexuality was removed as a psychological disorder before he morphed into a Church "historian-author". Just another [wrong] lefty apologist.

The Pope, and the Church (incl. faithful Catholics), have more compassion and love for homosexuals than any of those who promote the wrong path in life for them. Catholicism wants to save lives and souls for all eternity, while the evil that promotes a sinful life (for homosexuals, heterosexuals and all beings regardless of sexual identity-if any) aims to destroy life here, and the hereafter.

Let's imagine. The rather large number of gays now compared to the number or percentile of gays in early christianity probably roughly the same? Or were there more of us then?

I mean after all it was our decadence that destroyed those empires, wasn't it?

Well there we were all hanging about being decadent and all and up pops christianity.

And over time us gays found out, thanks to christianity, that we were terrible people. We did not know this. Before christianity we were just the boys next door but after christianity, our being sexual became the source for most of the evil in the world. If I remember correctly it was the gay Emperor Bigus Dicus that ordered the first good christians to death.I believe that was his name.

We on the left are a mere reflection of the light of your all consuming silliness. The moon to your sun.as it were.

Who was Jesus's mater before Mary bore him? Nothing comes from nothing remember?

Such silliness, only the illogical, irrational left could be so juvenile – no one has to prove anything to any of the lefty-bigots. Faith is sufficient for our beliefs - really, who cares about convincing you? Such arrogance. You were invited, you declined, good luck with that. We're not interested in joining your religion, stop proselytizing. Use the legislative process to promote your vision for society, mankind (Detroit, LA and Chicago come to mind), we're not interested in it, we have our vision for mankind here and the hereafter, Jesus gave it to us.

The lefts opposition present facts (repeatedly) about the msm antiCatholic bias, and back it up with reams (generations) of documentation, here at TMR, and elsewhere. The left can't defend any of their claims of a fair or honest msm via documentation (proof) concerning Church matters (any of them). An attempt at such an effort would be such an exercise in insanity that no one sane would ask for proof. Insanity requires treatment, not indulgence.

And, the former personality flaw is not the only disorder expressed by the left that requires treatment. Atheism is also about as insane a philosophy as any ever imagined by the colorful cuckoo-birds. Interestingly, Atheists comprise the same percentage of the worlds population, 2-3%, as do homosexuals and social-radical (antisocial disorders) anarchist [so close to antichrist, heh?] types. What a coincidence. Are they all the same 2-3%?

Before the left-whacks respond with "where's the proof", expecting other commenters to do their legwork, dont bother, you're on your own- as your doting mommies (should have) said "look it up yourself".

Let's be honest, somebody with a warped sense of humor started a new "religion" some generations ago, named it Atheism and waited to see how many antisocial (leftist) goofballs would show up through the ages to claim the booby prize.

I hope he'll be able to recieve communion one day. Unless the church has changed it's mind about divorcees being "able" to receive the sacrament. (I told you I've been away for a long time. I don't know what the latest restrictions are.) I'm not being ironical here.

Grow up, to disagree is not to hate, stop the juvenile attempts to shut down debate, no one is buying it. No one disparages homosexuals here, deviant acts committed by them are at issue.

Why do only 3% of the population insist on identifying themselves only sexually? Heteros don't. No other animals do. Sexuality aligns with anatomy (form and function) in all life forms. That's a fact. The only time animals exhibit homosexual behavior (considered abherrent) is during opposite sex droughts. And then, it is only temporary and necessary to perform, practice important ritualistic behaviors necessary to succeed at mate-selection, bonding and reproduction. And, it is never consummated. That's a biological fact. PC won't/can't change nature.

Who cares what you do in your sexual life? Keep it off the streets, out of the parks, off the beaches, out of airport rest rooms, out of the schools and their classrooms, out of our Churches, mosques (good luck even surviving in there), synagogues and temples; keep it out of our childrens athletic departments and camps and boys clubs, and our religious celebrations (parades) and seminaries.

It is the 3% shoving their sexual behavior, as the one thing that defines their entire existence, on the 97% that is driving your perception of problems. Such a narrow sliver of the universe in which you reside.

Go away into your bedrooms with your sexuality and live, and die, your chosen lifestyles. It is your free will, for which you can thank God.

Your laws were all over our bedrooms (and your's) and if gays hadn't stepped out the majority of those laws would still be there. Some Americans didn't like when the miscegenetion laws were repealed too. Tough.

First, the whole idea is not to put on any “wigs” at all; the idea is to have an actual competence in processing (even more than acquiring) accurate information, thus being able to usefully and intelligently process the information or factoids one comes across in order to formulate a coherent position based on what evidence there is.

And again with this “ladies” bit … the cafeteria more than the sun-porch or the day-room, but it signals at just what tree-top altitude JR will be flying in this comment.

He asks us to “imagine” – but then it’s unclear just what we are supposed to imagine: it appears that he is asserting that there is a “rather large number of gays now compared to the number or percentile of gays in early Christianity” … but then he adds “probably roughly the same?” – so grammatically he is saying that both were and were-not more gays at one point in time rather than the other. It makes no sense as the comment is written.

Then – apparently – “up pops Christianity”. And does this comment presume that Christianity sprang up complete and completed in the earliest Christian centuries? That is surely a Cartoon construction.

And what is the point of this bit in the first place?

He raises the subject of homosexuality. And thereby we are already and immediately in difficult historical waters here because the concept of ‘homosexuality’ was only put forward in the late-19th century. We don’t want to make the mistake here of presuming that what is discovered in the brute material world as a ‘scientific law’ can easily be analogized to cultural issues. Thus while Newton formulated laws of Gravity and Thermodynamics and persons could realize that what he described in the 17th century was actually a description of dynamics that had been in operation since the beginning of the planet, we cannot easily claim with equal justification that the ‘discovery’ of ‘homosexuality’ in the 19th century had the same validity in the cultural realm as Newton’s Laws had in the material-Scientific realm.

And this sort of thing is dangerous historical maneuvering. Unlike scientific elements, which operate mechanically, human culture and history are to a great extent comprised of human thought and desire and will and capability – and those constitute essentially unpredictable variables. Thus nobody can really do for the cultural and historical realm what Newton and Einstein did in the material-Scientific realm. (I could have included Darwin here, but not accurately, since his theory has – since Agassiz and Darwin himself first realized it when the theory was new – that theory suffers from some very serious conceptual complications and difficulties that even today have not been resolved and indeed have only gotten more acute.)

JR then asserts that “before christianity” there were no cultural problems with homosexual activity (or orientation? … there is a notable difference) and what we would today call ‘gays’ were “just the boys next door”. Among all or most of the human cultures (even the tribal) and the great world civilizations … ? Can that assertion actually be historically supported and established as a fact? Or is it just a Cartoon arising out of desire and contemporary political ideological agendas?

The Monty Python quip pales into insignificance and worse in this context of such major and vital and complex historical issues. But the movie (Monty Python’s Life of Brian from 1979) was probably in the Mental Shoebox on a 3×5.

Notice though the cargo-cult-native effort at mimicry: the sober and cultured and suitably modest disclaimer “If I remember correctly” … JR certainly has put on his ‘smarty Wig’ and is doing his best to speak good into the coconut attached by a vine to the empty packing crate.

And again, to these types it’s all about mimicry, the appearance you can project rather than the substance of what you say and its congruence with actual reality. (And so I note again and again and again: with persons who are enmeshed in this approach, just what was their approach to their claims and allegations and assertions when they signed up for their whack at the piñata? And under oath.)

Nor does the Monty Python reference add anything to the coherence of the comment overall, unless JR is inferring that Christianity has taken revenge on ‘gays’ for millennia because “Bigus Dicus” once ordered them to death? Or is he inferring that ‘gays’ have been taking their revenge on Christianity since the days of “Bigus Dicus” (who, in the film, was Emperor when Christ was crucified and indeed on the day of the Crucifixion, and there was at that point no ‘Christianity’ yet established)? Or are we going to be snarked-at for thinking too much about JR’s little reference which he intended to have no meaning whatsoever? In which case I ask: why include it if it had no relevance or intended significance to the subject under discussion? (This is why classes are not held down in the cafeteria.)

Then JR refers to “we on the left”. But then who am I supposed to be oppressing with my comments (“the moral consciences of conservative( usually less educated intellectually or religiously …” of July 31st at 210PM)?

And then he gets himself into incoherent straits when he goes for the we-are-the-moon-to-your-sun bit. If that image is accurate, then Christianity/Catholicism is still the Sun, upon which all light depends. And tops off his sundae with the cherry that everything he opposes here is nothing but “your all consuming silliness”. Readers are welcome to draw their conclusions.

He is correct that “nothing comes from nothing”. However in a Multiplanar universe something can come from Something, even if that very real (and Real) something (and Something) comes from the Metaplane.

He is welcome to believe that there is only the Monoplane and the this-worldly and material. Surely down in the cafeteria those denizens don’t imagine there’s any other actual and real ‘place’ in the school building, where anything worthwhile is going on. Pass the ketchup and fries.

I promoted Bigus Dicus to Emperor. I think. (Oops. sorry P) I do what I do.

Glad you got the Python ref.

And if you don't watch Fox News where does your Bill O'Rielly like delivery come from? Could it have been a religious vocation?

Ah.The anger of Catholics, unforgettable in my life and I was the really good kid. That fear of hell can really keep you jumping. It sure did me.But so much anger.

If classes arn't held down in the cafeteria what makes you think the cafeteria is a place for your "classes".?You just asked me to pass you the ketchup and fries. Welcome to the cafeteria.( where most Catholics shop for their catholicism., apparently. That's according to the stats.)

My worst abuser because he wanted to marry. He'd been sent to Hawaii and headed a catholic co-ed highschool in Maui. (That failed it seems) I thought the order had booted him after me; but no. He refers to " the cloud hanging over him" in his correspondence referencing his history with me I guess. Others, maybe?

Once again I note that certain commenters give us their take on something, but don’t think on their own to offer a link to the material itself. May we have a link to whatever material JR is talking-about here?

But why bother just write what you always do. I know your modus operandi so well. I could write it for you: No proof. Wasn't doing well with both teachers. Yada yada .

Except I had direct witnesses for Plieman. my whole freshman class room watched him squat down and rub his forarm across my groin. And he was,by far my lesser abusor; and he did the same thing to two other boys in class.In my opinion the whole room was perpetrated by these acts that and the fact that Plieman was the most angry violent man I'd ever seen.

But McGloin was the worst.

Yesterday when I saw these records for the first time and learned that Fr. Clemens, who I told when I was 16 what was happening to me, absolutly wrecked me. Clemens, later became the head of the Marianists in Calif and Hawaii ( or up there I don't know or care what his title was) I know Clemens was definitely McGloin's boss. And for years he was his boss and friend. It seems like quite a narrow little world.

And all those years I thought that after me they would have booted McGloin; but no he left himself in 1970 to marry a nun who had left. I heard that from Bro. Bolts at my 20 yr. reunion.

I was a ticket taker at the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood I had long hair and a beard It was 1968 or "69. McGloin walked in the theatre. He didn't recognize me. I literally doubled over with pain i got another person to take the door. My stomach cramped so hard. The audience went in to the play (Your a Good Man Charlie Brown with Radar from Mash as Charlie Brown). I left. My boss let me go home.

So much pain and anger keeps coming up for me after yesterday.

Clemens told me at 16 I could ask for a therapist if I felt I needed it. I was F*&%king 16 he was 40 (Clemens). How would I know if I needed a "therapist"? They didn't tell my parents ( I was sure they would and I just couldn't i was too ashamed.) This is awful to me.

P I'm glad you don't watch Fox news that's a huge point in your favor ( Probably the only point in your favor. Your ad hominem attacks never end do they?. Bill O'Rielly does that as well hence the comparison.) I was talking to D.

Catholic theology didn't influence US policy-law on either miscegenation or sodomy, Protestant-Puritan, both rabid antiCatholic, ethics did. And, the gay revolution had nothing to with the suspension of either law (which were obviously unconstitutional).

As I write this comment, the last comment up is mine of 719PM. The last of JR’s comments up is the one time-stamped 740PM. In this comment I am responding to his of 648PM.

JR’s ‘promotion’ of the “verwwwy gweat fwend in Wome” (to put the script text exactly) is a bit of exaggeration which merely brings me back to the point that certain types here have a rather loose approach to truth and thus we must wonder how loose their approach was to truth when the time came to make allegations and claims for the piñata events. After all – as JR himself says – “I do what I do”. Just so.

And apparently, in a boffo display of the mimicry of historical thinking, JR has figured that since my “delivery” is somehow – to his mind – very similar to Bill O’Reilly’s (with whose work I am not in any way familiar) then either I do watch Fox News or else – waittttt for itttttt! – I may have “a religious vocation”. A neat red-herring but what would be its relevance? If I were the Pope himself, would my ideas and questions have no standing of their own? That I am somebody simply trying to get to the core of a public matter of major significance with whatever knowledge and skill I can bring to bear … that isn’t enough?

Of course not. Because it is my ideas that he cannot address and so he will try something – or anything – else to create a distraction. We’ve seen all this before.

And then he tries to characterize my material as “anger”. Apparently the large amount of Abusenik material we have seen here over the course of more than a year is to his mind so sufficiently and demonstrably credible and substantive that the only possible explanation for any doubt or questioning is “anger”. We’ve seen this before too.

And yet also that this “anger” somehow comes from “the fear of hell” – and perhaps somebody can follow the line of reasoning in that. But we are assured that JR “was the really good kid”, bringing back the old trope of perfectly and utterly good kids who suddenly were utterly deranged (along numerous axes of analysis) by ‘abuse’. That’s one possibility. But there are several others.

I don’t “hold [my] classes” in the cafeteria. I comment on this site and as I have often said about the internet, anybody can come along and put up whatever they want to (expletives thankfully deleted). So – as I have said before – we find ourselves in the situation of trying to hold a serious discussion while anybody can drop in and do whatever it is that they do and like to do. It is what it is.

Lastly, there is the bit about Catholics and cafeterias. This is apparently a connection that appeared in JR’s mind: the old phrase ‘cafeteria Catholics’. Very droll. Not very relevant, but droll. As if there are few seriously committed Catholics (except, perhaps, “angry” ones). Readers may make of this what they will.

Still awaiting some link to something. I have no doubt the material thus linked-to will be informative, one way or another.

"Why don't you tell D that 4000 new seminarians won't even make a dent in the church's need for priests in America."

Logic would dictate [for most] that the claim that the Church is shrinking would necessitate the need for fewer priests. I am not sure what sort of logic claims that the Church is hemorraging faithful, yet, needs more priests?

Apparently, the decrease in priests has not stemmed the growth of Catholics in the US; she has ingeniously compensated by utilizing other religious (again, enrollment at seminaries has increased, hopefully, establishing a trend which will produce more priests).

Anyway, too much time spent on the lefts illogic-insanity; here is a link to the 2012 CARA reports. The uninformed should peruse these stats/reports for a better handle on reality (Truth), and more fruitful and honest discussions/debates at TMR.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the [minor] minor abuse matter in the Church and the dishonest and bigoted media reporting of such, but, if it does nothing more than re-educate and possibly ameliorate the hate, and perhaps even save another soul, it is worth the effort to assist others with their homework.

A sit down with the ex spouse of the self appointed white knight of roman catholics around the world. Truly a conversation that I can only dream of.

How many skeletons can be removed from that closet ?

It would be worth a lifetime of reading Publion's and Delphin's lengthy and always defensive rants when it comes down to the matter of the catholic church, clergy abuse, and any other matters of the human race they feel they are experts in.

it's the content and delivery that I loathe And do you own this site? Is this your party? Are you the host? No? So who are you to say anything about "anybody can drop in." You just drop in as far as I'm concerned. And though you may be literate, I say maybe, your take on this scandal is rather out there. No one else seems to have your take, anywhere but here.

I know many good; honest; faithfilled Catholics but from your behavior here, I wouldn't count you as one of them. IMHO

But I know that won't bother you one iota. You remind me of the brothers and priests i had in high school that's why i think your a cleric. you "think' like one.

When the bigots can't effectively respond to the facts and logic presented, they go on full-frontal assault.

Always the same sophomoric mental meltdown. How tiresome.

Then, there's the escaped (and very revealing) thoughts about skeletons and ex-spouses, loathing and comparisons to abuser-clerics. How very civil. True leftists in evey sense (Non-sense, more appropriately).

I eagerly await the abuse not because I'm a masochist, I don't think I am . I just want to see Christian love in action. I wait for it every time but it never seems to come. Do you even know what that is?

Gee, I must be missing something in those documents that JR proveded a link for. I now am even more skeptical about those settled law suits (actually, was it reported that at least half of LA suits were bogus from the get go). If I find some time, I'll have to look further as I may have blinked. But even some news articles say they are lacking in evidence. I know Publion has commented previously.

It’s the 4th at around 945AM and I have come across the recent comments. I am going to put up a few thoughts on the material in the comments themselves and then I will take a look at the link JR provided and put up my thoughts in a second comment.

On the 3rd at 156PM JR slyly does some pre-emptive damage-control by claiming that once I look at the documents I will “just write what [I] always do”. I write what I write from what arises in the material; if it turns out that we will have in these documents merely the same type of gambit that has been run in all the other ‘released documents’ material we have managed to view on this site, then since it the same old Abusenik gambit then my thoughts will run in the same direction again because the material runs in the same direction again. We shall see.

JR has now learned to mimic “modus operandi” and we’ll see how that works when spoken into the coconut half tied to the vine tied to the empty packing crate.

Thus I will take JR”s ‘recollections’ and put thoughts about them on hold until I see the documentary material. Meanwhile I might note that there is no sense to be made out of “In my opinion the whole room was perpetrated by these acts” (although, again, the mimicky “in my opinion” sounds nice).

The connections between his thoughts in the Fox News paragraph in this comment are anybody’s to guess.

So more from me will be forthcoming shortly when I’ve looked over the link to the documents.

At 217PM on the 3rd JR says that he doesn’t “discount your ideas” … “it’s the content and delivery I loathe”. I don’t believe he was addressing the comment to me, but I will ask: once you take both content and delivery out of “ideas”, then what is left? This is the equivalent of saying ‘I don’t hate people; it’s their bodies and souls I loathe’ – what’s left not to loathe? But notice that grammatically it’s a way of saying X while seeming not to say X. Neat. And from an otherwise grammatically challenged it goes to reaffirm – I would say – that despite the lack of actual competence in processing and delivery of ideas, there is a certain primal slyness at work in so much Abusenik material.

At 1113PM on the 3rd JR has apparently given more thought to his possible vulnerabilities once the documents are actually examined, and takes another stab at some pre-emptive damage-control: May he write my “take on the my perps released records?”. But it is snark: why should he do so (he doesn’t dare try it in the first place) because then readers would have “to read it twice” – how thoughtful of him. Of course, as I said above in this comment, if we run into the same Abusenik gambit that we have run into before with released caches, then the commentary is going to be somewhat the same. He suspects that, it appears – or knows already that we are going to run into the same Gambit again and is trying to somehow foam the runway for what he knows has to be coming. It certainly whets the appetite to have a look at these docs.

But notice then that this paragon of the Abusenik mind has already classified any comments except supportive and total-agreement comments as “abuse”. When you are working with mentalities that can feel ‘abused’ if they are not completely agreed-with (and immediately given what they want) then you are going to be in grave and constant danger of committing ‘abuse’ right here on the site … in front of all the readership as ‘witnesses’. Thus the geography and dynamics of the Abusenik universe.

And –but of course – we are lectured that any such “abuse” will be just more examples of “christian love in action”. And so once again, we are warned that if we don’t totally-accept his claims, and if we doubt or raise questions, then we are violating the tenets of “christian love” and demonstrating – no doubt – its useless hypocrisy. It’s even easier to ‘sin’ in the ‘atheist’ universe (or at least JR’s version of it) then it is in the Catholic world, isn’t it? In JR’s universe you can sin simply by not giving him what he wants … a requirement with which, curiously, any parent of a two-year old would be familiar.

I wonder why JR – whose military experience, as he has revealed here on occasion, has prompted him to deploy ‘military intelligence’ and ‘counterintelligence’ methods in conducting his examination of SNAP (and its purported cozy relationship to the Church) – doesn’t consider the application of military-intel and counterintelligence methods to the examination of his claims and assertions to be equally valid. Textual analysis is textual analysis, after all. And it surely isn’t a violation of Christian charity and love. Telling lies and twisting the truth like a pretzel would be such a violation, though.

And so then who can be surprised when he plaints that “I wait for it [i.e. Christian love] every time but it never seems to come”. Of course it doesn’t “come”, if you’ve defined it as being-given what you want with no questions asked.

“Do [I] even know what that [Christian love] is?” I do. And I know that it isn’t charitable to anybody to give a two-year old everything he wants when that ‘everything’ includes the violation of truth and accuracy, and to do so in front of a lot of other people (the readership).

I also note the nice rhetorical touch – so dear to the Abusenik heart – of referring to “my perp”.

Lastly, we have commenter Ecker – who may or may not have yet tried to use his self-claimed judgment-of-character expertise in the bathroom mirror (without Wigs) – who demonstrates that while talking into the coconut doesn’t necessarily bring the great silver birds and big canoes, it does seem to connect to other of the cargo-cult community. So there’s a bit of ‘magic’ for everybody to ponder.

I will be posting before too long, once I have reviewed the documents in this cache that JR links-to.

None one but leftists are supposed to have their own opinions about the "human race"? Just because our opinions (fact based) do not align with yours (not fact based), we shouldn't express them?

And, this is a perfect example of an overindulged political constituency that has been so accustomed to shutting down opposition speech (that annoying 1st Amendment, there it goes, again) that whenever they hear something they don't like it is considered offensive (i.e. racist, homo-femo-Islamo Phobe….).

Oppressing free speech is as every bit as "bad" as oppressing any God-given (natural) rights and obligations, and those of the US Constitution (which were informed by a Judeo-Christian theo-philosophy - not by Islamism, paganism or Atheism).

Why does the left support such oppressive philosophy? Usually, that behavior is expressed by the small-weak of intellect/mental/emotional/moral prowess (and sometimes, stature), and number. They may succeed for a brief time, but, are always conquered, eventually – thanks to God.

The generation of "progressive" (def: only if hell is your destination) thought and policy is nearing an end since the evidence of it's monumental destructive failure abounds, throughout the worlds afflicted societies, in all it's ingloriousness.

Meanwhile, we will continue to exercise our God-given and Constitutional rights and obligations as we, alone, with the help of God, see fit.

Perhaps, there's a little kid down the block the lefty-petunias can still bully into submission?

I am not in the running for anything; I could not possbily care any less about your personal records/files and claims. My sole focus is on the antiCatholic hatred, driven by a few different entitlement groups on the left, mostly, but not exclusively, that is also driving the media bias/bigotry, and not on any one claimant-victim.

As you say, your case was settled, so your matter is settled, for better (if you were a true victim) or worse (if you weren't). No one but you and your abuser(s) will ever know that truth.

I do find your response to the commenters – that which appear to question the ability of the released files to support any abuse claims, of particular interest as a case study of a victim-claimant's emotional stability. First, there is your invitation to or expectation of criticism (why?), then the "I hate you" outburst (you really weren't surprised since you practically invited such response) and finally the threat to use illegal means (thiefs) to continue to convict [more?] innocents. Is that what we do to get our way? Is it really "the ends by any means"?

While you well may have been a victim (I actually happen to believe you were, oddly enough), the fact that you still can't let it go (you did get your justice, I believe?) and your sole intention, as has been repeatedly expressed here, is to continue to brutalize the Church, and faithful (those that don't agree with your ideology) Catholics is one of the most troubling aspects of your types of "cases".

So, I believe you were abused (regardless of evidence, you seem authenthic in that regard), and that really is terrible, and I am sorry that horror happened to you or any minor - and your abuser(s) should have been convicted/punished (not settled) for their crime.

On the other hand, there needs to be discernment in the Church abuse matter. It is bad enough that minors were injured and predators were unpunished. It is also bad if the opposite occurred, or is still occurring – due to hate and bigotry. If abuse victims are frauds and innocent priests are now the victims, that is no better situation. To my mind/eye, TMRs focus is the latter, not the former – and you and other abuse victims, if you are honest about your intentions which is only to bring justice to other real victims, are using the wrong outlet for your grievances – hence, the "ka-boom" dialogues at TMR.

As is thoroughly documented, the majority of your comments on TMR (and elsewhere) are designed to continuously poke the eye of faithful Catholics and to express hate for the Church and Catholicism. Why would a true victim of abuse who claims to be only searching for justice be doing that?

You make no sense.

And, that is why some commenters are questioning everything, from you, or others – as they/we should (it's the separation of the goats from the sheep, it's what Catholics are suppossed to do). Only hate and bigotry explains your continuing venomous vitriol consistently expressed against the Church. If it's hate you need to thrive, you won't find fuel for it here, no matter how hard you try, or distort or deceive. You will have to manufacture it yourself, as you have already done many times.

God help and bless you, and all victims, including innocent religious.

Apologies – I was on the road and it has taken longer to get back here today.

I have gone to that law office’s site and reviewed the documents pertaining to Plieman (194pp) and McGloin (272pp). There were several other Marianists’ files and files from other Orders, but I stayed with the two JR had mentioned in his comments here.

In re Plieman: The file begins with a collection of documents going back to the 1930s with supporting information for his application to the Order – that takes 28pp of the cache.

Then on p29 of the cache we have a letter from April 4, 1973 in which he requests dispensation from vows because, generally, he considers that his “faith is not strong enough”. And there are some letters back and forth about that. [Readers interested deeply in canon law will note that as a ‘PS’ to a letter from Plieman’s superior to a higher authority in the Order, there is an off-hand mention to the effect that Plieman’s superior had applied for the laicization of a priest – one Choo (nowhere else mentioned here or in the case, as far as I can see) – without Choo’s knowledge. I don’t know whether this was canonically legal in 1973 but I am under the strong impression it is not canonically legal now.]

Then on p53 of the cache we get a July 5, 2005 email-memo from one “bbolts” stating that in 1984 a former student (name blacked-out here) had definitely not approached him – and in the presence of another grad – at a reunion claiming he was “molested”. This ‘bbolts’ then goes on to say that from what he knew of this grad’s academic performance, it is not surprising that the grad would have named both his math and science teachers (Plieman and McGloin) since the student didn’t do so well in those subjects. He also mentions in this email-memo that the blacked-out-name also claimed another student was molested, but ‘bbolts’ says that no other student/grad had come forward with any such accusations.

That’s that for the July 5, 2005 email-memo.

Then there is a repetition of some of the earlier documents from the 1930s and 1940s that I mentioned above.

And finally there is a document or a couple in the cache in which Plieman requests dispensation from vows as early as 1969 for his “faith” issues.

And that’s it. With the exception of the July 5, 2005 email-memo there is nothing else of immediate relevance here; nothing else but a long collection of the various types of forms, certificates, permission-requests, budget projections and so forth that would accrue – I imagine – in any personnel file anywhere over the course of decades. Nor are the cache documents in chronological order; and there is, as I said, a notable amount of repetition in the reproduced documents.

I was also surprised because I was looking for both a) more information-on or references-to “molestation” or even some of the court documents or sworn-statements submitted by the law office on behalf of its client (JR, presumably). Yet all we have here is a 200-hundred page compilation of run of the mill material that has no relevance to the matters at hand here.

Why did this law office not include the sworn-statements or such more directly-relevant material? Why did this law office include so much non-relevant material? (My thought: to claim that it had ‘released hundreds of pages of material’, which to some out on the Web might simply be taken to be ‘evidence’ and further ‘proof’ and so on.)

Then to McGloin’s even longer (272pp) cache of material. There is, in addition to the usual entrance-application documentation, a 1970 request for dispensation in order to get married. There is (p34 and subsequent) a 1951 standard Order evaluation form about him that notes a certain “forwardness in speech and lack of judgment” as his notable weaknesses (although it also lists strengths). There is a repetition (p62) of the 1970 request to leave to get married

Then (p65) there is again reproduced that July 5 2005 email-memo from ‘bbolts’ about the 1984 re-union and the student (name again blacked out), as I discussed above in regard to Plieman.

And (p266) there is another standard form evaluation dated April 1, 1965 that notes at the end of the form that McGloin “has a problem of which the Provincial Administration is aware of”. This may well refer to his ongoing desire to receive dispensation in order to get married, or it may refer to something else. But in any case there is nothing else in the cache that discusses it further.

And that’s it.

First, let me say that all the above material in my comment here is simply a description of the material in the cache listed under the names of these two people.

And I again note that I was expecting to find some substantial documentation as to claims and allegations, sworn-to by the plaintiff and perhaps the supporting documents (if any) from others in regard to the client’s claims. But the law office has provided nothing of the sort.

Both of these gentlemen seemed to have ongoing issues with their vocation (one because of “faith”, the other because he wanted to get married and had formed some deep emotional ties to some “nuns”) and were conflicted about continuing in their ministry and vocation. But with the exception of that July 5, 2005 email-memo there is nothing in either of these files to shed any light – although that may conceivably be because there was nothing relevant to matters of relevance to the TMR site’s concerns.

If the law office is in possession of more relevant and informative documentation, it has chosen not to put that documentation up here.

Thus, at this point we are left with nothing but JR’s claims here – most recently to the effect that in the presence of a classroom-full of students one of these gentlemen – Plieman – put his elbow or forearm on JR’s groin area. And the claim that Plieman “was, by far my lessor abusor” – presumably implicating McGloin as the more serious abuser, but again the cache does nothing to support anything.

Concerning JR’s claim that “Plieman was the most angry violent man I’d ever seen” we are left with a large cache of documents – including newspaper clippings – that gives no indication of any such thing. And we have JR’s substantially-demonstrated propensity for looseness with definitions, accuracy, exaggeration, and so on and so forth. (He was “absolutely wrecked” – spelling corrected from the original – when going over these materials as recently as a few days ago … a rather vivid exaggeration, surely.)

The idea that a 16 year-old wouldn’t “know” if he “needed a therapist” – although the offer was made – is a bit much, if the damage done was as great as JR claims it to have been. Many people without clinical certification in mental-health studies can and do find their way to therapists because they feel they need one. And this would only become more so as the years went on and one reached (chronologically, at least) adulthood. The parents were never informed: not by the faculty or school because – for all we know – there was nothing to report to them; not by JR because he was so “ashamed” – of what? We still have no way of knowing what happened, from reading this remarkably bland (and ‘perpetration-free’) cache released by the law office.

We remain with this remarkably odd situation where the actual documentation documents relevant to the cases and claims and settlements are not provided. I say again that my thinking has been that it would not be in the interests of the law offices (and their Plaintiffs) to have the actual court documents released because it would expose those claims and allegations and ‘stories’ to public examination and – as I think is supported by what we have seen (yet again) in this released document-cache – there is a great deal to doubt in all of that Plaintiff-submitted material.

But this on-going ‘stay tuned’ approach to the release of documents does serve some purposes for some ‘interests’ involved in the Stampede: a) it serves to refresh ‘belief’ among numbers of un-thinking readers who don’t carefully or particularly follow the Catholic Abuse Matter but will simply assume that The Ball Is Still Rolling; b) it serves to stimulate and whet the appetites of those who have not yet decided to try for a whack at the piñata; c) it enables torties to claim that they have yet hundreds and thousands of pages of fresh ‘revelatory’ material that will be sure to outrage and stun; and d) it enables various media outlets to Keep The Ball Rolling in order to keep up readership. (In that regard, it seems that the Boston Globe, media initiator of the 2002 phase of the Stampede, has now been sold for 10 cents on the dollar (less if you subtract the value of its real estate and office and production facilities and machinery assets), not long after its editor jumped the ship he had wrecked and went on – unlike the captain of the Italian liner Costa Concordia – to helm yet another major paper.)

So once again, in terms of looking at a released-document cache trumpeted by JR, we get … pretty much nothing. For all we know from what is in these files he has simply used the release as a pretextual occasion to repeat his still-unsubstantiated claims.

In a 600-million dollar settlement (and I have discussed at length on this site the sue-the-bishops strategy of lawsuits and D’Antonio’s descriptions of Anderson’s initial vision) another million might have simply been the baseline amount for dubious but necessary-to-settle claims. That possibility cannot be ruled-out here, especially in light of the (non-)documentation we have in these files. And as I have noted previously, it remains a notable oddity in D’Antonio’s very very victim-credulous text that JR is specifically singled out as someone “who said he was” abused.

So many questions – I make no effort to say anything more dispositive than that, because there is certainly nothing in these released documents that would justify it one way or the other.

When I put up my second comment of the day at 959PM, I noticed a couple more from JR (1256PM and 101PM).

Apparently we are to blame for thinking “there would be a smoking gun in these texts”. As my own comments have made clear, I was looking merely for some confirmation of allegations already made, not of any ‘smoking gun’ of further abuse un-claimed.

And once again: why was the law office so selective in what it published? As my 959PM comment indicates, the documents in the files of these two gentlemen are almost ludicrously bland and are irrelevant and immaterial as well. If the offices had more material such as anything JR might have submitted (certainly it must have the sworn statements or the Complaint or at least the relevant parts of the Complaint) then why were those not included? The matter of secrecy is one I dealt with in the 959PM comment – and it is my thought that such secrecy quite possibly serves the interests of the Plaintiffs at least as much as if not more than the interests of Church.

JR is quite right that he doesn’t “have to prove anything” to us “cretins”. However we then are under no obligation to credit his claims, assertions, allegations, and stories. Surely there is no illogic or un-charitableness in that.

The in-your-face about the bank-account is pretty much what might be expected with ketchup and fries as is the “hate” bit and the rest.

However the comment of 101PM does add something useful. JR asserts that he “will gladly train any thief off the street to get money from you” because such thieves “stand morally taller than you lot”. I think we are seeing a rather marvelous demonstration of projection here – to use the term in the clinical sense. And I think that what we are seeing in this comment is also a revelation of both a) the type of mentality involved more than anyone would care to think in these Abusenik allegations, and b) the type of rationalization in defense of its actions that such a mentality deploys.

Thus the thieves – in this vision – stand morally taller than the persons from whom they are taking the money. Just so. What thief in prison hasn’t consoled himself with the idea that he is Robin Hood and therefore totally justified? What tortie, for that matter?

P, Keep on inferring me to be a thief and I'll sue you for slander. When I offered to train any thieves, of course i was being facetious. I just wanted to live down to your opinion of me. But as I said, I find thieves to be morally superior to you.

You don't get that if a boy is molested in front of other innocent boys (and it happened to 3 different boys in that class) that the whole room is perpetrated? Then you obviously know nothing about the subject of sexual abuse and it's consequences. You are a spoiler and a professional one. I have no doubt.

Bolts, that jerk, missremembered a 1 minute conversation from 21 years before; about two different things. He however was sure that both my perps were innocent good men. Bullshit.

And again Brother Plieman was THE most scary person I've ever had to deal with until now and you; and I've delt with a lot of people in 66 years. So congratulations your horror show beats out many others. Quite the triumph.

Why don't you tell the truth, you are religious not because you love a god who you have no proof exists but because you're narcisisistic, frightened,and greedy for a life after death and a "Candyland" as it were, where you an live in eternal bliss vs. burning continously in your god's barbeque. Your god is immoral if that's the game "it" plays with human beings. And you just follow "his" lead. The sane no longer see you as on the side of morality but on the side of "self". I will admit sometimes you people are moral and do do the right thing but it's hit or miss. and as far as your own victims are concerned. You are beyond corrupt and decadent.

Your god is also immoral because he performs "miracles" through Mary at Lourdes yet allows: The slave trade and the holocoust and the sunami. If he is all powerful and all good "he's" a creep.

Roughly 7 million children a year under 5 years old die on this planet while your leadership wear gold and carry diamond chalices to worship your "all good all powerful" god. Well if'he' is those things and does nothing he/it is immoral because he/it is not just.

i, personally would spit in his eye if he was real. just for morality's sake.

I guess I should have had my perpetrator initial and date his underwear and had him give it to me. that I could show you ala Monica Lewinsky. But that wouldn't be enough, would it, P?. Perhaps a DNA test on the garment. Still not enough for P. If only I had a photographer with me when it happened. But if a photgrapher had been with me the abuse wouldn't have happened; now, would it?

Jim Robertson and Delphin needs to go to a marriage retreat and see a counselor about their individual issues. Have they made a point in reference to the article. Little odd that there is a member of the mentioned anti-Semitic group SNAP with the name Jim Robertson.

Thanks for your opinion. Explain please anti Semitic re SNAP? I used to be with SNAP at the beginning in L.A. but pulled away from identifying with them after about a year. I would appear at demonstrations with SNAP because that was where other victims would be.

I ask because my room-mate and most of my friends are Jewish. Are you saying that because SNAP doesn't go after Jewish religious perps? I don't know if they do or don't. inform me please.

Thank you D for believing me. I appreciate that. It took long enough but I do, truely, thank you for that.

I disagree with everything you say, practically. I see you as a racist; but no one has ever stopped you from writting what you want to, here. I've never tried to get you stopped. Where you are at, says much in my favor as a lefty. IMHO.

But aside from that, i do say to you: thanks again.

Now to P

Both my parents went as far as 8th grade in school. Both had to leave for economic reasons.

(Still my mother could answer at least half of the Jeopardy "answers" on each show.)

My father's father died in a mental institution after his liveray stable burned, it had been his life's work, everything gone; and worse some of his favorite horses died horribly. Today he would have had therapy and anti-depressants probably. Any way therapy was mocked in my home. (My father didn't believe in evolution either.) They thought if you needed therapy you were "crazy" and that was a touchy subject for them. They thought "insanity" was hereditary and sometimes it is i guess.( I found out all this in front of my father's sister who was furious my father had said anything about it. His family was very big on keeping it secret, including from their own children. she never told hers')

So psychiatry was degraded in my house as a sign of "insanity" or as an indulgence for rich people. And homosexuality was horrific to them. a double whammy for a 16 year old to handle ALONE. Anyway that was the matrix I was coming from.

As far as my being wrecked is concerned,

I believed I was ending McGloin's career when I told and thought I was protecting other children in the future and Fr. Clemens personally assured me that would happen.

Instead, he and McGloin worked intimately for 7 more years together. Even having McGloin escort Clemens' sister and brother-in-law around Maui.

Maybe Clemens thought like you P that I was making this stuff up. I don't know. But if I was doing it to "get something" I didn't even try when I could have. I didn't even tell anybody, outside my friend in school, till i was in my late 20's I was still shamed by it even then.

I don't know why I keep talking to you like you're a "regular" human being ;and that if I'm just honest enough you'll 'get me" and then we can " all just get along"; But still I do.

I really like people and want to get along with them but I know that won't happen with you P.

Sorry I was saying about being wrecked: I guess I thought they believed me and now I don't know if they did.

Everything I told them was absolutely true but this new stuff just f#%ks with me. Sorry there is no other word.

Maybe McGloin denied it. I was so obedient and so religious. i wanted it to END. Yet I could not disobey a teacher when he said to report to him. And I thought they will never believe me over him. Never. And maybe I was right.

Hell, Bro Bolt was vice principal of the school , at the time. I was sure he knew, at the time. But now I don't know and all that has wrecked me. that's just how I feel right now: Betrayed and wrecked.

I challenge the race-baiters to cite one post of mine that could, in context and without distortion, ever be deemed racist by any definition of the word, even if found in an urban dictionary. You made the charge, now, go find the post that led you to your erroneous (…speak of libelous) claim. You can't. Moving on….

Find ways, fellow adults, to disagree without inventing boogey-men. The lefts strategy is to first demonize the opposition, making it as personal as possible, and then dismiss them and their contributions via your (failed) reprofiling of their character. Won't work, been around the block a few too many times for that kiddie-nonsense.

So, aside from some links that led nowhere, for most of us, and opened old wounds for another, the fact remains that some (many?) settlements were made on flimsy, if any, evidence, and the media and its lefty supporters are practicing a nasty ritual of extreme bigotry against the Catholic Church (try to follow along here, Mathius…).

Finally, there is no response addressing why abuse victims who have reaped their justice still have so much unresolved hatred for Catholics and Catholicism, as is expressed here even recently (still with us, Mathius?). This fact is at the heart of the whole Church abuse matter, which is the hatred for the Church that drives the current persecution, and no recognition of the criminal act committed by individual men (very sick men), which is where the focus needs to be if these crimes will ever be successfully addressed, and, we can save other potential victims. Sick men commit their evil acts everywhere, and mostly everywhere but the Church. That is just another one of those annoying facts that refuses to go away.

Is it occurring to any other observers here that Jim is trying to use his "frenemies" here to help him resolve his issues with those past abuse events?

Assuming they happened (I do) and that he really hasn't been able to move on (would explain the fresh hatred for everything Catholic, and the still raw emotionality), how could any of us here, participating for an entirely different reason, possibly help? If anything, we could be (quite innocently) making resolution worse for at least this particular commenter.

Have we been wrong to assume that he is emotionally healthy enough to debate such an emotional issue, logically? Perhaps this distorted world he's apparently stuck in is the only truth he knows. Would it not be like opening that wound, repeatedly, if no one, even 50 years later, believed you- and neither you nor they could make the pain and memories go away?

How easily he slides back to those times, the labs, closets, those classrooms, his parents, the players, the loss of the family business – he hasn't really moved on emotionally, intellectually from those days. He's still that kid fighting those same demons. He's still trying to convince some "good Catholics" of what happened, and punish them – his teacher- brothers, parents, family, friends – good grief, what a tangled psychological web.

Yo, Jim, you need to not look for resolution or justification of your sanity, or worth, on these sites. You do need to get with a pro and let this possession-obsession of your soul (and your mind) be exorcized, finally.

Seriously, dude, no one here (not the TMR "residents") is into sadism, certainly not me. Unfair fight! Even if one of us was qualified to help- this is not the place/forum for such an undertaking.

Go get this thing out of your life, already (no need to take it to the grave), then come back for a battle of another day.

Well I'm amazed. All I have is a very good memory. I can remember my grand mother on 3 occasions and she died when I was 3.

Again i always think if you know your "enemy" in this case me. You might, through exposure to said enemy, walk a mile in their mocasins as it were.

Excuse me Delphin do you think your qualified to judge my sanity and to do it here? Do you have any qualifications to make such a judgement? a degree and license to practice medicine perhaps? Till then may I quote the gospels to you? The story about the mote in your neighbors eye compared to the beam in your own.

I don't know if you got that in catechism class on Saturdays or not. I'm not being facetious here. Or judge not lest ye be judged. etc. I think you think your attempting to be kind, kind of.

But I don't trust you as far as i could throw you. You too are a bit of a wild card. The fact you can't see where you've been racist here says a lot. I'm not the only person to have said it about you LC said it too. That was not intended as an ad-hominum attack. It was just true I know I hoped you'd take that critique to heart and do something about it. But you just deny it and frankly I don't have the energy to go down that path with you. But I want for your sake to figure out why two absolute strangers to you and each other see you that way. I believe your worth telling the truth to. That's why I'm saying every thing I say here.

As far as fake abuse cases go you don't know how many( if any; and I sure don't know if there are any. You can't even give one or two examples and that's out of one hundred thousand victims in the U.S. and that's according to the John Jay report. So what's the story? What you are not getting about this scandal is it's a scandal because of what the "un sick" did. Not the ill perps. Not the abusers; but their bosses. That's the scandal. Those are the crimes as well.

I notice a hardly-surprising slew of comments from JR. None of them address the major curiosities and oddities that I mentioned in any substantial way. But there are some relevant and useful bits.

At 1206PM JR approaches legal thought with the same looseness and lack of focus that I imagine lubricated his allegations: I did not say he was a thief, and ‘inferring’ is something else altogether. And he was the one who brought it up thievery in the first place. But he has inferred himself to be a thief now … and that is what it is.

He ‘finds’ (my, my) that thieves are morally superior to me – but he has a whole lot of opinions he’s expressed here over the course of time and they are what they are.

He “was, of course, being facetious”. As always, when caught, this type of mentality suddenly claims it was only joking, and with the Wig of Bemused and Hurt Victimization cannot think why anybody would have taken him seriously (and yet how often have I been taken to task here because I do not give due consideration to JR’s material?). A conclusion with which I am certainly now inclined to agree. And – neatly but almost too slyly – defends himself by claiming that he was merely “trying to live down” to my “opinion” of him. Neat.

And we are now to believe that “a boy was molested in front of other boys” (the forearm or elbow in the groin area – in front of a classroom full of other students, I presume). He does not apparently have a sufficient grasp of the language to realize my point about his statement as to an entire roomful of people being “perpetrated”.

He asserts that I “obviously know nothing” about sexual abuse and its consequences” – although at this point he has now equated the elbow-forearm incident with sexual-abuse and being “molested”; and what consequences might flow from that experience, especially when it appears from his story that a) that experience happened in front of other boys (so nothing to be secretly ashamed of); b) it happened to other of the boys (so no isolation); and c) it involved not only no sexual penetration but as related to us does not clearly establish the motive or context of the teacher involved.

I have said several times before in comments on this site that one of the key Victimist gambits is to compress the entire spectrum of sexual experience so as to make the case that – for example – an arm on the groin is the equivalent of a rape or other overt and legitimately-characterized brutalization. But – as we see here – we are presented with the possibility of all the worst psychological and emotional outcomes on the basis of that arm across the groin. Given this non-symmetry (between experience and consequence) other possible explanations for the claimed extensive damage are created: the possibilities that arise are i) untruthful exaggeration and ii) a prior fracture-proneness in the psyche (because if any sexual experience equivalent to an arm across the groin-area were in and of itself to create such life-wrecking consequences , then how has the species survived at all?). This is not in any way to condone such horseplay or – in the case of a teacher and a student – such unprofessional and assaultive behavior; but if such a level of ‘victimization’ were in and of itself capable of creating the life-wrecking consequences Abuseniks claim, then we as a species would not be having this conversation in the Year of Grace 2013.

I am indeed a “spoiler” to the extent that I am spoiling JR’s preferred story and chain of causation. But I am working with the material provided and that material simply doesn’t work out to the results JR also claims. As for my being a “professional” spoiler, I have no idea what that means. I might add that “military counterintelligence” textual analysis techniques are specifically designed to “spoil” various deceptions; JR himself originally raised this line of thinking. And JR has “no doubt” about a lot of things; and so what?

We are now also informed that in order to accomplish the aim of professionally ruining or disabling his pictured “perp” JR had a “1 minute conversation” about that (arm across the groin) experience “from 21 years before”. Surely this effort can hardly be construed as an effective and sufficient way for the now-adult (chronologically, anyway) JR in 1984 to go about the strategic task of achieving his objective. And there remains the dog(s) that didn’t bark here: where were the other 3 boys or the rest of the class? Were none of them at the reunion in 1984? (I don’t know who came out of the woodwork when the piñata was erected and – 21 years later in 2005 – the potential and easy financial rewards of the now-established sue-the-bishops Phase of the Stampede was in place … but that very fact of potential and easy reward itself creates unsavory possibilities that serve to vitiate and “spoil” the stories then sworn-to in lawsuits).

There is nothing, as I said, in the files published by the law office that supports JR’s assertions about Plieman’s character. Why that might be … is at this point open to various possibilities.

I am then informed as to why I am “religious” (am I, really?): it is not “because [I] love a god who [I] have no proof exists” … but alas for JR I have sufficient experience that has convinced me; enough for me and yet I don’t go demanding that everyone embrace it.

Rather, I am “religious” (however defined) because I am “a narcissistic, frightened and greedy for a life after death and a ‘Candyland’ as it were, where you live …” and so on. (The “as it were” is a nice bit of mimicry, though). First of all, I note here that JR has – willy or nilly – opened up the psychiatric and psychological level of analysis (sauce for the goose – sauce for the gander, as he recently said). But if I engage in that, it will be only if there is a useful way of illuminating the overall Abusenik approach or stance.

Second, readers are welcome to consider the validity of Dr. JR’s diagnosis. It is one thing to assess the quality of conceptual material; it is another thing to pretend a psychiatric diagnosis: not even competent clinicians ethically or professionally deliver such diagnoses ‘from a distance’. But then, JR has given no indication whatsoever that he qualifies as a clinical-professional.

Third, the reduction of belief to psychiatric issues is a gambit we have seen before in recent world history.

Fourth, I am “beyond corrupt and decadent” – I’ll be sure to give that assessment every bit of the attention and respect it deserves.

Fifth, I am a “sociopath”: the Doctor – as they would say in the Peanuts Cartoon – is in.

At 1221PM JR is on about God with the usual stuff about letting all the suffering go on in the world while performing “miracles” at Lourdes. Here, JR’s eagerness to put enough snow together for a ball has led him off the rails once again: if the quotation marks around “miracles” is meant to imply that God doesn’t actually work miracles at Lourdes, then the wind instantly goes out of the attempt to blame God for somehow misusing His power. But if the “miracles” is merely meant to indicate a quotation from my material – and thus God does indeed perform miracles at Lourdes – then JR has gone and admitted an awful lot about God’s power and – willy nilly – existence.

Then at 1229PM we are informed that whatever his “perpetrator” did required “underwear”. There is no indication of this in his prior material, where Pleiman is not mentioned in any such context; and if McGloin was, then we have no evidence of it either in the files. But we still wind up with a situation where JR apparently was involved at the “underwear” level with somebody (McGloin? ) but only mentioned it in a one-minute conversation 21 years later.

And we are left once again at square-one, with JR complaining that it’s not his responsibility that there were no witnesses to what he claims happened, and yet no indication that he has understood and considered the fact that without any evidence he is merely telling a story, as far as other persons being able to credit his claims is concerned.

Then to 326PM. I don’t see the relevance of the 8th-grade comment; clearly his parents were aware of the workings and dynamics of sex. If it takes a high-school education to understand the physical workings of sex, then our species would never have survived for the length of time it has.

However, we are after all this time informed that there is a history of mental institutionalization in the immediate biological family (or is this a non-biological father?). This is a flag-marker fact that would have to be taken into consideration in any competent formal clinical analysis. It is also a fact that has to be taken into consideration when assessing the matter of JR’s claims and allegations. It is not of itself dispositive, but it has to be taken into account. While no formal clinical assessment can take place here, yet in the matter of the Stampede and JR’s participation in it this is an element that cannot be ignored as readers consider the material that is put before them.

Slyly, JR tries to have his cake and eat it too by quickly positing a functional reason for the institutionalization (the burning of the livery stable), thus working to neutralize the possibility of an organic cause (inherent mental illness). The most interesting aspect of this particular point is that JR would tell a story that appears carefully constructed precisely to cover all the possible bases in order to maximize the victim-value of the institutionalization while simultaneously minimizing the possibility of a pre-existent condition of mental-illness in the (presumably biological) parent. Like so many of the Abusenik stories we have seen, this story seems almost deliberately-constructed to cover all the bases (you would get an effect or result of this type if – say – a tort attorney or staffer coached you in how best to craft and present your story).

Nonetheless, the fact remains (as he himself has related it) that therapy was offered to JR initially and he refused: it may have been a regrettable fact about his nuclear family, but the fact that JR came from a family that seems to have been so spot-on against “therapy” is not really an issue to be laid first to the responsibility of the priest or Brother who offered it. (Another question is immediately raised by all this: did this cleric offer therapy on the basis of the claimed abuse or on the basis of the cleric’s assessment that JR was not altogether mentally well in the first place?)

There also remains, of course, now, the possibility that some sequelae of a possible mental issue were evident in JR even as early as his student days, and certainly by the 1984 reunion, and the priest or Brother at the reunion was also aware of it. At any rate, a one-minute conversation surely wasn’t the sign of any mature seriousness about the matter. (But then came the Stampede and the piñata and that first lifting of the Statutes of Limitations in CA, as time went on.)

Since we don’t have a clear idea of the father’s mental issues – except JR’s effort to steer us toward some sort of stress-related cause – we cannot accept JR’s subsequent effort to explain the shortcomings of psychiatric/psychological therapy in that era (whenever that era was in this story). The failure of therapy with the father may have been a result of the intractability of the original issue, rather than the insufficiency of stress-related therapeutics in that era. We really don’t have enough to know anything here.

The “wrecked” bit arose in my comments as a response not to the consequence of the alleged abuse, but as the descriptor JR used in describing his claimed reaction to reading the law-office cache material just a few days ago. For someone of his advanced years and (self-presumed) maturity, to be describing himself as “absolutely wrecked” is substantially problematic: either he is accurately describing himself at this point and the probability of some amount of consistent or even intractable fragility is introduced into the equation here, or else he is merely exaggerating – and if that is what he is doing then we are once again reminded that we are dealing with somebody for whom expression and facts themselves are rather plastic and mutable.

There is no evidence in the files about any communication involving Clemens – the local superior in the Order – that references conversations that JR says happened. Why would the law-office leave any such material out? Or if there was no such material in the file, then what are we to make of that?

JR doesn’t know why he keeps talking to me as a “regular’ human-being”, claiming that he imagined that if he were just “honest” then I would “get” him (is that what the slang means by ‘grokking’ somebody – as in ‘I grok you’?) and “we can all just get along”. That’s not the purpose here, certainly not for me. This isn’t a support-site for Abuseniks; I am trying to get to the bottom of a Matter whose proponents themselves seem intensely-invested that such investigations or analysis only goes in certain directions and not others. And – I repeat again and again – nothing has come to light to indicate that allegations and claims happened exactly or even generally as they are claimed to have happened. There’s no getting around that fact without simply ‘agreeing’ to ignore it – and that I will not do.

Did JR not mention that he had difficulties with relating to people even in that brief military stint? I think – like commenter Ecker’s self-fancied expertise in judging character – that JR is being rather too generous in his self-assessment of his competence in camaraderie. The fact that I have not joined in those preferred errors may irritate both of them, but that’s not my problem.

In regard to his 341PM comment, I really don’t know what happened; I have seen no indications in any of the law-office’s released material that supports JR’s claims of what happened; there are clearly now alternative explanations that cover a lot of the bases that need to be covered in explaining what happened; and so I really don’t see where there is anything more that I can do. Readers can consider the matter on their own and reach their own conclusions.

And again – to feel “betrayed and wrecked” almost half a century later doesn’t so much sound a familiar theme of pathos as it raises some rather serious questions about deeper and more personal issues that I don’t think it is proper to pursue further here.

Lastly, in regard to the 351PM comment: I noticed that bit in the material but – as with other bits – could not see that it had any clear relationship to any claim JR has made, rather than to the ongoing issues McGloin was having with his entire vocation as opposed to leaving the Order and getting married and those several intense personal relationships he had developed with various nuns. But I would like to think that the tort attorney didn’t base his JR-section of the Complaint on that single oblique comment about the “cloud”. But then again, in a Stampede, and in the sue-the-bishops Phase of the Stampede, who knows?

And that is the epitaph here, I would say: who knows? Who can know? On what basis can any rational assessment of the extant material help any observer to know?

First of all what I post here is my truth. The fact that you call my take on things. "usefull bits" is degrading per usual. My life and take on this, your church's scandal, is not posted here for your vivisection. You are superior to no one here. So get off your high horse, boss.

I started out dealing with you P, around the length and monotony of your posts. I said the length of them was boring. And they were and are that.You demand more attention by their length and all they are are ad hominem attacks. Every one can see your scalpel as you begin to carve.

Brief military stint? I was a draftee who served this f&$%king war machine "country" for 2 years. I exited the army a Spec 5 with a good conduct medal. Who the f are you to judge me or anyone else?

You really aren't very bright are you? "Nothing about Plieman as a teacher" Nothing about my conversations at 16 with Clemens. My lawyer and I didn't write the church's files on my perps. The church did. This was about getting the church files. The fact that the church didn't file my letter or show records of my abuse has nothing to do with my side in this case. It does however show their's.

As far as "mimicry" goes. I don't know who or what you think you are. I'm writing the way I write you don't like it or my mispellings? Go spin.

Everything else you've written in this post is foolishness.

There was nothing in McGloin's files about my or anybody else's complaints. So the order or just Clemens kept the secret. Duh! there's a big surprise.

I would have been surprised if there was a smoking gun recorded from the time of the criminal act and released now.

And now I'll give you back your style of "logic": How do we know the order or Clemens didn't have secret files showing the real history of these brothers? They might exist they might not they may have been destroyed. We don't know.

But don't you think my telling Bolts about my abuse 30 years ago according to his letter, shows that I was telling the truth. It was long after i could have sued due to the statutes of limitations. If I was lying or trying to get something from your church that I didn't deserve why did I only write the church about what happened to me 8 years after that reunion asking for help?

Again with the amatuer uneducated shrink crap?. You know nothing about PTSD absolutely zip. If you did you would'nt be posting such dung.

My attorney never saw McGloin's records till now. These are newly released documents to US. Unseen by us till now. Get it?

Are you allright? You are making even less sense than usual.

I am a "Stranger in a strange land" here for sure. I can believe you've never "grocked" any one. You've no empathy at all. Hence the "sociopath".

THE most traumatic event in my life happened 50 years ago. I based my entire life on some level both consciously and unconsciously on that event and what I was told about the resolution of that event by Bertrand Clemens. Finding out what I thought was true, as told to me by him, was not; has brought up lots of pain for me. Pardon me for mentioning to a sociopath that I have pain behind this.

If talking to a victim isn't getting to the 'bottom of the matter" AS It WERE, what is.? Your made up "stampede"? Your incredulity at everything coming from our "side"? I have no problem with honest skepticism but your's isn't honest. Why are you seeking answers here? Does Delphin have proof to back your assertions? Do you? No you don't. You've merely proposed "your' "thesus" on the matter sans any proof at all. Just postulations on your part. You are the one with out proof here. So why not, put up or shut up?

Racism: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race (Merriam-Webster)

Leftist: the principles and views of the left; also: the movement embodying these principles; advocacy of or adherence to the doctrine of the left (Merriam-Webster)

Just because you dont agree with the ideological position of traditional-libertarian-conservatives (center-right) on matters regarding a citizens obligation to be productive contributors to society, does not mean they are racist. We believe that all people of all races, religions, gender, "preferred sexuality", economy and education are worthy and capable of self-sufficiency and independence from government dependency/enslavement.

We believe that all men have God-given talents, equally distributed, regardless of the lefts politically-determined entitlement designations, to guide men in service to God.

Leftists do not.

You tell me who the racists are?

Two antiCatholic leftists claiming racism everytime they hear something they don't like (ala Sharpton, Jackson, Matthews, Rangel, Wright, Holder, Maddow, Reed, Pelosi, Savage…shall we go on?) does not a racist make. Two commenters here started the typical lefty racist rant against me (and others, incidentally), which is nothing more than the Alinskey Rules for Radicals centerpiece. It means nothing in light of actual facts, which are my written words, as illuminated by those pesky definitions. Facts just suck for the left – don't they?

You identified yourself as a socialist-communist- liberal, atheist, homosexual activist. That makes you a leftist. It isn't a criticism or "name-calling", it is a fact.

Facts (such as statistics) are also those things that I use to support my position regarding the wrong-headedness of the lefts ideology that is morphing our (American) society-culture from one of independence, ingenuity, life-affirming and productiveness to slothfulness, selfishness, deceit, conceit, gluttony, murder and dependency = welfare/slave state.

Atheists (and leftists) never quote Jesus in context or with true intent when they attempt to use His Word to oppress Christian speech or obligations. Christians are required to assess right from wrong, good from evil, and evaluate ourselves and others faithfulness to His Word. Only God judges man for eternity. No one judged you, but, it is the natural law and Gods law that humans (and animals) make life-sustaining and soul-saving evaluations/assessments every day. Quite frankly, you put the beam in your own eye, for all to observe, and then invited input. Well, you got it. Regardless, get your Christian theology correct, do not distort it to fabricate a false debate. If you didn't want yourself to be assessed, personally, by TMR commenters, why did you provide such personal and emotionally-charged information about yourself? Why do you turn every article and commenters debate toward you, then, criticize the attention you so desperately crave when it doesn't perfectly align with your own worldview? Are you schizophrenic, too?

Finallly, and most importantly, to get off of you and your lifelong issues and back on to the topic- the reason that political ideology (such as Eleanor's), emotional-psychological health, morals, ethics, integrity and physical (or even circumstantial) evidence matters to the Church abuse matter is because all those things directly affect the reason for and, potentially, the outcome of the current unjust persecution of the Church.

So, you see, who /what the persecutors of the Church are matters as much as who/what the victims are, and who/what the accused are. You claim to be one of those players, I don't, and neither do the majority of the other sane commenters (hint: notice who the few loons are) at TMR. Emotionally-psychologically-mentally disabled "victims", coupled with an astounding lack of evidence and suspension of the SOL (again), does not an honorable (moral, ethical) prosecution, including settlements (not admission of guilt), make.

Enough is enough. I have been biting my tongue over the past couple of days but I must way in.

Publion, Delphin and Josie with their latest posted comments have made it very clear how truly clueless they are regarding the subject of clergy sexual abuse in the catholic church.

They clearly have no clue of what a abuse victim goes through regarding their past, present and what their future holds for them. They truly believe they know the true facts of what their catholic church is doing for survivors of clergy abuse. They believe that by reading newspaper articles or being told what their church is doing is fact. They do this without one ounce of experience of what survivors have been through and might go through.

Delphin, you FEAR Mr. Robertson with your entire being. You fear his way of life to obtain happiness in this world and you fear his beliefs. We both believe in God, because we have FAITH that once we finally close our eyes there is something else waiting for us, but you are also afraid to face the possibility there maybe NOTHING there except being placed in a box and dropped in the ground. Now since none of us truly knows what is going to happen when we die because we lack experience we should respect too what others believe. You maybe met with 72 virgins when you die.

Your clear attack of his lifestyle because they way you have been taught comes across as so uneducated it makes you seem you have no thinking brain cells of your own. If anyone who has commented here and should question that lifestyle would be me. I was abused by a man, and to tell a short story I was stationed in South Philadelphia in a highly gay community and I will admit I acted the same way you do now. I did not understand. But I educated myself and you know what I found out ? The gay community is no different then the straight community. We are all looking for the same damn thing. However your character is truly from the old days. If you needed blood and knew it was coming from a gay individual would you tell the hospital "no thank you" ?

Now to Josie. You have always been a follower. You will always be a follower. There is nothing else I can say.

Finally Publion. You are the most confused of all. What are you trying to prove ? Your only thing in life you have to look forward to is this blog. You have even made an apology because you felt people were sitting on the edge of the seats waiting to read what you have to say stating " Apologies – I was on the road and it has taken longer to get back here today". WHO CARES ?

You think of Mr. Robertson as a thief and you think of me as being a violent individual. If I was Mr. Robertson I would sue, you have been warned. I would instruct Mr. Robertson to make copies of your comments. I have.

You think of me as being violent but truth be told I do not condone violence. I will be very very honest though when I learned that my abuser died of a painful stroke after being seen in his doctors office only a few hours earlier and was given a clean bill of health, I have to admit it placed a smile on my face. Would it be normal if I felt saddness in his death ? I will let you answer that. Do I gain strength when clergy members or any abusers are found guilty in a court of law and put away for years ? I will let you answer that also.

There are 16 James Robertson comments since I last commented ( 8/4} on one of HIS comments-sheesh! ( The comment was regarding his finally giving this forum some link to back up his stories about his experiences, etc. and I simply said that I did not find anything worthwhile there.

So Dennis this brings me to you (who I thought had maybe gotten a job or hobby or gone on vacation (maybe from from his vacation) from his very important involvement here being resident worst judge of character and interpretation of events.

Your post above is really quite comical with regard to your take on Delphin and Publion. I hope that you did not spend much time thinking of words to say while biting your tonque before posting the above nonsense. They can speak for themselves but it is hardly worth it. You are just plain "off the wall" wrong and everyone knows it. You just get everything wrong-and misspell, misuse words and phrases while you are at it! Very comical but annoying…

So, you devoted one sentence to me -great-no problem…but I just want you to know that the most incorrect description of me would be "follower". My titles through my life have been Executive Director, Coordinator, Manager, Managing Editor, and President -oh, probably about 10 times of many groups, eg. local library, home and school, and many more clubs that I have been a part of. I have never been the secretary or treasurer, just president. People who hardly know me think that I am in charge. My family and friends Know I am in charge. You need to stop thinking that you are good interpreter of anything. You are NOT! So, if you continue to "way in"-( by the way, it is "weigh in") try to stay away from the stuff you are not very good at.

A pedophile has victims (many) that are 11 yrs or younger. I thought that you have stated that you were in high school (it is a little vague) when you allege that you were "abused" (now , you call it rape?). I have always wondered about your assertions and what you said, your protests, your incorrect observations. your reporting method and so much more. In any case, you need to get your terms right, too.

If I may, I'd look to provide an example of my idea of a pre-constructed statement: A couple of decades ago Jesse Jackson was addressing a group of drug addicts. He said "I too was once addicted … although only for a short time … under a doctor's supervision".

What you see here is a statement that is trying to have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand Jackson wanted to establish his common identity with the addicts in order to establish his creds and authority. But on the other hand he wanted to avoid the serious downside of having anybody take his 'addiction' and pursue the negative implications of that statement.

Thus he added the two follow-on bits. But – as I think most readers can see for themselves – in trying to avoid the negatives he completely undermines his original idea, since 'addiction' as these addicts would have experienced it is precisely not something that a) remains under competent supervision and control and b)lasts only for a short time.

When I put up my most recent comment this afternoon, the comments of 1134 on the 7th; by Sken) and JR (1206 on the 6th) were not up.

In regard to the former comment: I am not sure just how I can be more “precise and clearer analysis” – perhaps Mr. Sken (not usually known for same) might provide more information as to what is not precise and clear to him. I do point out, however, that with mental illness at institutionalization level now on the table, I am – as I made clear – going to go too far down that road beyond what general comments the JR material would support.

Now to JR’s of 1206 on the 6th.

Yes, precisely: What JR posts here is “my truth”, as he says. I have merely been pointing out the difficulties of squaring it with any evidence that might enable JR’s personal truth to become a shared truth (to the extent that such a congruence can legitimately be achieved).

The Wig of Victimization: saying that I will cull JR’s material for “useful bits” is – but of course – “degrading”. But that is what this site is for: to find useful material for persons trying to get as solid a grasp as possible on the Catholic Abuse Matter. As I said, this is not a support-site for Abuseniks (there are already sites that do that). But there’s nothing like declaring some form of victimization to grab the high-ground early.

Now before I go any further, I point out another complication that has arisen for me: there is now the possibility that we are dealing here with some level of mental illness and I am not really comfortable going down that road too deeply. This may or may not be connected to Mr. Sken’s comment, but I want to avoid getting into anybody’s personal swamp here. JR seems to have taken to the tossing around of specific psychiatric or psychological diagnoses (“sociopath” being a recent example) but that’s what he does; it’s not what I do.

Again with “the length and monotony” of my posts; as I have said: ideas will have that effect on some people and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t “demand attention” by my posts for the simple reason that any reader can ignore them if s/he wishes. The “demands” to which I made reference are the actual textual insistence that one be believed or that others accept one’s assertions. I don’t do that (objections to that statement should be accompanied by accurate quotations, thank you).

I said JR had a “brief military stint” and he has confirmed he was a two-year draftee. I fail to see how I have thereby ‘judged’ anybody. There is no way to validate JR’s military awards and promotions (as there is no way to validate mine) so that bit is a non-starter in the internet context. (The stylized expletive remains what it is.)

Now to the files matter (about which I apparently – to JR – have demonstrated a lack of intelligence): If there is nothing in the files about any evidence relevant to the case, then there remains the question as to why the law office has published them. Surely the law office reviewed the files before it published them. We have files; we have no claimed “letters” or “records of [JR’s] abuse”. That is, he says, not his fault or his lawyer’s. But then it is not anybody else’s fault if it is then pointed out that JR’s assertions remain hanging in the air with no evidence. And the absence of any such claimed evidence does not necessarily demonstrate anything about the Order (“the church”) but still demonstrates the fact that there is no evidence in the files. It is what it is.

I have explained my “mimicry” thoughts and examples when and as they have come up. Enough said.

Readers are welcome to entertain the assertion about my comment being “foolishness”.

The absence of anything in the McGloin files falls under the purview of the comments I made a couple of paragraphs ago. But I would add here that we are then led to the question: if there is nothing in the files then upon what evidence was the JR segment of the lawsuit brought?

I do not say this to single out JR as opposed to the other 500-plus Plaintiffs; it’s simply that we are working with JR material here. Actually, our experience with the JR material actually raises questions in regard to all of the various allegations in the 500-Plaintiff lawsuit. Or are we dealing with a huge lawsuit that was largely brought on the basis of very little evidence at all? If there was no “smoking gun” in these files, a) why publish them at all? And b) was there any “smoking gun” in the evidence at all?

As you can see, we are getting here to a very substantive question about the entire lawsuit and perhaps about the Stampede itself.

My own “logic” is to look at the material that is presented and work with what we have. JR’s claim to use my own style of “logic” is to imagine the existence of even-more “secret” files that we haven’t got and which may not even exist. The two “logics” are – as I think it is clear – rather different indeed.

And in any case, for the Plaintiffs to say “we don’t know” should actually pretty much derail a lawsuit. But in the Stampede era, we have seen and continue to see that that need not be the case: lawsuits can still proceed. You see where this type of thing can go.

No, I don’t see how what JR himself calls a “1 minute conversation” at a reunion 20 or so years after the fact “shows the [he] was telling the truth”. Especially since ‘bbolts’ didn’t have anywhere near the same recollection of the event that JR has.

There is no indication of whatever JR did “write to your church [the Order?] 8 years after that reunion asking for help”. What “help” did he ask for? (Perhaps a fruitless thought at this point and in the internet context since we have no documentary evidence before us.)

Now to the psychological bits and the characterization of me as an “amateur uneducated shrink” with my “crap”. First, what evidence does JR have that I am actually an “amateur uneducated shrink”? None (to save us all some time here). Second, I precisely did not involve myself in any diagnostic material or thoughts; I simply stated sound general clinical principles to the effect that a) a history of institution-grade mental issues in a biological parent is a “flag” that must be considered in any “formal clinical diagnosis”; b) which I then immediately went on to say was not something that could be done “from a distance” and I wasn’t going to do it; but that c) the fact (as stated by JR) was something that had to be taken into account even by readers when they were assessing his material. I made no diagnosis of JR (I didn’t – for example – call him a “sociopath” or “narcissistic” or make any claim that he actually was suffering from any substantive mental issues). Doth JR protest too much? Even if so, it is not dispositive in any diagnostic sense.

The “records” were clearly “seen” by the law-office – and perhaps the specific attorney who represented JR – once they were released and before they were put up. Or are we to believe that the disk containing the records was simply taken out of a mailing-envelope and transferred immediately to the law-office’s website? (But even if so, they were clearly formatted and divided up by Order and individual cleric.)

So – yes, I am “allright”. And clearly JR doesn’t “get it” if he expects us to believe that that “now” somehow disposes of a significant sequence of actions and tasks including reception of documents (whether printed or on disk) from the Order by the law-office, review (or no-review) by the law-office personnel (no attorney saw them?), and then formatting and posting on the law-office’s site by law-office personnel or by its IT sub-contractors.

There are many possible reasons why JR might consider himself a “stranger” but I said I wasn’t going to go into that on this site and I won’t. And if JR wishes to believe that the only “strange land” here is the one inhabited by the readership (and myself) then there’s nothing for it and he can do as he pleases in that regard.

Again, his explanation of his diagnosis of “sociopath” falls far short of professional clinical requirements, and it is even deeply questionable whether I have no “empathy”. I have said many many times that I will not enter into the error of conflating “empathy” or ‘Christian charity” with the unquestioning granting of credibility to JR’s assertions and claims. So this ground has already been covered.

We have no way of knowing just what “the most traumatic event” of JR’s life was “50 years ago”, soothe assertion remains there where it was put. We have nothing more than his claim that Plieman’s arm-over-the-groin was not the worst and something else (involving McGloin) involved “underwear”. As I said before and say again now: nobody else and none of us here have any way of knowing one way or the other.

The fact that JR seems clearly to want something more than that result from this site’s readership indicates that he – and not I – wants something far more from the readership here than simple conceptual assessment of relevant material in order to get a more solid comprehension.

Thus, finally, I would say that the value of all of this drill has been to get an inkling (a ‘clearer comprehension’ is, alas, too much to say) of what odd evidentiary lacks and absences seem to exist, and perhaps not simply in this particular Catholic Abuse case but in others as well.

What am I “trying to prove”? I am not trying to prove anything. The question should be: What are the Abuseniks trying to prove – because I have not been able to find any evidence in any material that has been presented here.

Mr. Ecker seems to think that since he doesn’t care about what I write then nobody else does. I have no way of knowing. I apologized because I said I was going to comment quickly and I was unable to do so.

It was JR and not myself who brought up the “thief” trope and you will need to provide a quotation (an accurate one) to substantiate that I have called him a thief. And if you claim to know what I think – “you think of Mr. Robertson as a thief” – then that is even more unsupportable an assertion.

In regard to Ecker’s own “violence”, I clearly explained that I was referring to an interior disposition toward violence that is evident in his material (as I explained at length). And as if to confirm that, he now intones that I “have been warned”. And the legalese-y bits about the “copies” are clearly frosting on a poorly-baked cake since my comments here are now part of a permanent electronic internet record – although, as I also said, there is some serious question as to just what is legally actionable. But the legal noises are threats and we are back to the original point.

Mr. Ecker’s claimed experiences and feelings about the asserted death of his asserted abuser are – for all the reasons I have often explained on this site – not something that can be examined here and I won’t.

And lastly, we see yet again the Abusenik gambit: if you disagree with me or don’t accept what I claim, then you are ‘attacking’ me.

The significance of all this is not the individuals involved here. It is the fact that I think we can see clearly here the type of mentality that has played a much much larger role in the Catholic Abuse Matter and the Stampede than most people would care to think.